THE CHINESEBOY AND GIRL

BYISAAC TAYLOR HEADLANDOF PEKING UNIVERSITY

Author of Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes

PREFACE

No thorough study of Chinese child life can be made untilthe wall of Chinese exclusiveness is broken down and thehomes of the East are thrown open to the people of theWest. Glimpses of that life however, are available, sufficientin number and character to give a fairly good idea ofwhat it must be. The playground is by no means alwayshidden, least of all when it is the street. The Chinesenurse brings her Chinese rhymes, stories and games intothe foreigner's home for the amusement of its little ones.

Chinese kindergarten methods and appliances have nosuperior in their ingenuity and their ability to interest, aswell as instruct. In the matter of travelling shows andjugglers also, no country is better supplied, and these arechiefly for the entertainment of the little ones.

To the careful observer of these different phases itbecomes apparent that the Chinese child is well suppliedwith methods of exercise and amusement, also that he hasmuch in common with the children of other lands. A largecollection of toys shows many duplicates of those commonin the West, and from the nursery rhymes of at least twoout of the eighteen provinces it appears that the Chinese

nursery is rich in Mother Goose. As a companion tothe "Chinese Mother Goose," this book seeks to showthat the same sunlight fills the homes of both East andWest. If it also leads their far-away mates to look uponthe Chinese Boy and Girl as real little folk, human likethemselves, and thus think more kindly of them, its missionwill have been accomplished.

CONTENTS

THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMESCHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFEGAMES PLAYED BY BOYSGAMES PLAYED BY GIRLSTHE TOYS CHILDREN PLAY WITHBLOCK GAMES--KINDERGARTENCHILDREN'S SHOWS AND ENTERTAINMENTSJUVENILE JUGGLINGSTORIES TOLD TO CHILDREN

THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMES

It is a mistake to suppose that any one nation or peoplehas exclusive right to Mother Goose. She is an omnipresentold lady. She is Asiatic as well as European or American.Wherever there are mothers, grandmothers, andnurses there are Mother Gooses,--or; shall we say, MotherGeese--for I am at a loss as to how to pluralize this olddame. She is in India, whence I have rhymes from her,of which the following is a sample:

Heh, my baby! Ho, my baby! See the wild, ripe plum, And if you'd like to eat a few, I'll buy my baby some.

She is in Japan. She has taught the children there to puttheir fingers together as we do for "This is the church,this is the steeple," when she says:

A bamboo road, With a floor-mat siding,

Children are quarrelling, And parents chiding,

the children" being represented by the fingers and the"parents" by the thumbs. She is in China. I have morethan 600 rhymes from her Chinese collection. Let me tellyou how I got them.

One hot day during my summer vacation, while sittingon the veranda of a house among the hills, fifteen mileswest of Peking, my friend, Mrs. C. H. Fenn, said to me:

"Have you noticed those rhymes, Mr. Headland?"

"What rhymes?" I inquired.

"The rhymes Mrs. Yin is repeating to Henry."

"No, I have not noticed them. Ask her to repeat that one again."

Mrs. Fenn did so, and the old nurse repeated the following rhyme,very much in the tone of, "The goblins 'll git you if you don'tlook out."

He climbed up the candlestick, The little mousey brown, To steal and eat tallow, And he couldn't get down. He called for his grandma, But his grandma was in town, So he doubled up into a wheel, And rolled himself down.

I asked the nurse to repeat it again, more slowly, and Iwrote it down together with the translation.

Now, I think it must be admitted that there is more inthis rhyme to commend it to the public than there is in"Jack and Jill." If when that remarkable young couplewent for the pail of water, Master Jack had carried ithimself, he would have been entitled to some credit forgallantry, or if in cracking his crown he had fallen so as toprevent Miss Jill from "tumbling," or even in such a wayas to break her fall and make it easier for her, there wouldhave been some reason for the popularity of such a record.

As it is, there is no way to account for it except the factthat it is simple and rhythmic and children like it. Thisrhyme, however, in the original, is equal to "Jack and Jill" inrhythm and rhyme, has as good a story, exhibits a more scientifictumble, with a less tragic result, and contains as good a moralas that found in "Jack Sprat."

It is as popular all over North China as "Jack and Jill" isthroughout Great Britain and America. Ask any Chinese child if heknows the "Little Mouse," and he reels it off to you as readilyas an English-speaking child does "Jack and Jill." Does he likeit? It is a part of his life. Repeat it to him, giving one wordincorrectly, and he will resent it as strenuously as your littleboy or girl would if you said,

Jack and Jill Went DOWN the hill

Suppose you repeat some familiar rhyme to a child differentlyfrom the way he learned it and see what the result will be.

Having obtained this rhyme, I asked Mrs. Yin if sheknew any more. She smiled and said she knew "lots ofthem." I induced her to tell them to me, promising herfive hundred cash (about three cents) for every rhyme shecould give me, good, bad, or indifferent, for I wanted tosecure all kinds. And I did. Before I was through I hadrhymes which ranged from the two extremes of the keenestparental affection to those of unrefined filthiness. Thelatter class however came not from the nurses but fromthe children themselves.

When I had finished with her I had a dozen or more. Isoon learned these so that I could repeat them in the original,which gave me an entering wedge to the heart of everyman, woman or child I met.

One day, as I rode through a broom-corn field on theback of a little donkey, my feet almost dragging on theground, I was repeating some of these rhymes, when thedriver running at my side said:

"Ha, you know those children's songs, do you?"

"Yes do you know any?"

"Lots of them," he answered.

"Lots of them" is a favorite expression with the Chinese.

"Tell me some."

"Did you ever hear this one?"

"Fire-fly, fire-fly, Come from the hill, Your father and mother Are waiting here still. They've brought you some sugar, Some candy, and meat, For baby to eat."

I at once dismounted and wrote it down, and promisedhim five hundred cash apiece for every new one he couldgive me. In this way, going to and from the city, inconversation with old nurses or servants, personal friends,teachers, parents or children, or foreign children who hadbeen born in China and had learned rhymes from theirnurses, I continued to gather them during the entirevacation, and when autumn came I had more than fifty of themost common and consequently the best rhymes knownin and about Peking.

A few months after I returned to the city a circular wassent around asking for subscriptions to a volume of PekineseFolklore, published by Baron Vitali, Interpreter at theItalian legation, which, on examination, proved to be exactlywhat I wanted. He had collected about two hundred andfifty rhymes, had made a literal--not metrical--translationand had issued them in book form without expurgation.

Others learned of my collection, and rhymes began to cometo me from all parts of the empire. Dr. Arthur H. Smith,the well-known author of "Chinese Characteristics" gaveme a collection of more than three hundred made in Shantung,among which were rhymes similar to those we hadfound in Peking. Still later I received other versions of thesesame rhymes from my little friend, Miss Chalfant, collectedin a different part of Shantung from that occupied by Dr.

Smith. I then had no fewer than five versions of

"This little pig went to market,"

each having some local coloring not found in the other,proving that the fingers and toes furnish children with thesame entertainment in the Orient as in the Occident, andthat the rhyme is widely known throughout China.

These nursery rhymes have never been printed in theChinese language, but like our own Mother Goose beforethe year 1719, if we may credit the Boston story, they arecarried in the minds and hearts of the children. Here arosethe first difficulty we experienced in collecting rhymes--thematter of getting them complete. Few are able to repeatthe whole of the

"House that Jack built"

although it has been printed many times and they learnedit all in their youth. The difficulty is multiplied tenfold inChina where the rhymes have never been printed, andwhere there have grown up various versions from oneoriginal which the nurse had, no doubt, partly forgotten,but was compelled to complete for the entertainment of thechild.

A second difficulty in making such a collection is that ofgetting unobjectionable rhymes. While the Chinese classicsare among the purest classical books of the world, thereis yet a large proportion of the people who sully everythingthey take into their hands as well as every thought they takeinto their minds. Thus so many of their rhymes have suffered.

Some have an undertone of reviling. Some speakfamiliarly of subjects which we are not accustomed tomention, and others are impure in the extreme.

A third difficulty in making a collection of Chinese nurserylore is greater than either the first or the second,--I refer tothe difficulty of a metrical rendition of the rhymes. I haveno doubt my readers can easily find flaws in my translationsof Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes published during the pastyear. It is much easier for me to find the flaws than theremedies. Many of the words used in the original have no

written character or hieroglyphic to represent them, whilemany others, though having a written form, are, like ourown slang expressions, not found in the dictionary.

Now let us turn to a more pleasant feature of this unwrittennursery literature. The language is full of good rhymes,and all objectionable features can be cut out without injuryto the rhyme, as it was not a part of the original, but addedby some more unscrupulous hand.

Among the nursery rhymes of all countries many refer toinsects, birds, animals, persons, actions, trades, food orchildren. In Chinese rhymes we have the cricket, cicada,spider, snail, firefly, ladybug and butterfly and others.Among fowls we have the bat, crow, magpie, cock, hen,duck and goose. Of animals, the dog, cow, horse, mule,donkey, camel, and mouse, are the favorites. There arealso rhymes on the snake and frog, and others withoutnumber on places, things and persons,--men, women andchildren.

Those who hold that the Chinese do not love theirchildren have never consulted their nursery lore. There isno language in the world, I venture to believe, whichcontains children's songs expressive of more keen and tenderaffection than some of those sung to children in China.

When we hear a parent say that his child

"Is as sweet as sugar and cinnamon too,"

or that

"Baby is a sweet pill, That fills my soul with joy"

or when we see a father, mother or nurse--for nurses sometimesbecome almost as fond of their little charge as the parentsthemselves,--hugging the child to their bosoms as they say thathe is so sweet that "he makes you love him till it kills you," webegin to appreciate the affection that prompts the utterance.

Another feature of these rhymes is the same as that found in thenursery songs of all nations, namely, the food element. "JackSprat," "Little Jacky Horner," "Four and Twenty Black-birds,"

"When Good King Arthur Ruled the Land," and a host of others willindicate what I mean. A little child is a highly developedstomach, and anything which tells about something that ministersto the appetite and tends to satisfy that aching void, commendsitself to his literary taste, and hence the popularity of manyof our nursery rhymes, the only thought of which is aboutsomething good to eat. Notice the following:

Look at the white breasted crows overhead. My father shot once and ten crows tumbled dead. When boiled or when fried they taste very good, But skin them, I tell you, there's no better food.

In imagination I can see the reader raise his eyebrows andmutter, "Do the Chinese eat crows?" while at the same time he hasbeen singing all his life about what a "dainty dish" "four andtwenty blackbirds" would make for the "king," without everraising the question as to whether blackbirds are good eating ornot.

We note another feature of all nursery rhymes in theadditions made by the various persons through whose hands,--or should we say, through whose mouths they pass.

When an American or English child hears how a certainbenevolent dame found no bone in her cupboard to satisfythe cravings of her hungry dog, its feelings of compassionare stirred up to ask: "And then what? Didn't she getany meat? Did the dog die?" and the nurse is compelledto make another verse to satisfy the curiosity of the childand bring both the dame and the dog out of the dilemma inwhich they have been left. This is what happened in thecase of "Old Mother Hubbard" as will readily be seen byexamining the meter of the various verses. The original"Mother Hubbard" consisted of nothing more than the firstsix lines which contain three rhymes. All the other verseshave but four lines and one rhyme.

We find the same thing in Chinese Mother Goose. Take thefollowing as an example:

He ate too much, That second brother, And when he had eaten his fill

He beat his mother.

This was the original rhyme. Two verses have been added withoutrhyme, reason, rhythm, sense or good taste. They are as follows:

His mother jumped up on the window-sill, But the window had no crack, She then looked into the looking-glass, But the mirror had no back.

Then all at once she began to sing, But the song it had no end And then she played the monkey trick And to heaven she did ascend.

The moral teachings of nursery rhymes are as varied asthe morals of the people to whom the rhymes belong. The"Little Mouse" already given contains both a warning anda penalty. The mouse which had climbed up the candle-stick to steal tallow was unable to get down. This wasthe penalty for stealing, and indicates to children that ifthey visit the cupboard in their mother's absence and takeher sweetmeats without her permission, they may suffer asthe mouse did. To leave the mouse there after he hadrepeatedly called for that halo-crowned grandmother, whorefused to come, would have been too much for the child'ssympathies, and so the mouse doubles himself up into awheel, and rolls to the floor.

In other rhymes, children are warned against stealing, butthe penalty threatened is rather an indication of theuntruthfulness of the parent or nurse than a promise of reform inthe child, for they are told that,

If you steal a needle Or steal a thread, A pimple will grow Upon your head.

If you steal a dog Or steal a cat, A pimple will grow Beneath your hat.

Boys are warned of the dire consequences if they weartheir hats on the side of their heads or go about with raggedcoats or slipshod feet.

If you wear your hat on the side of your head, You'll have a lazy wife, 'tis said. If a ragged coat or slipshod feet, You'll have a wife who loves to eat.

Those rhymes which manifest the affection of parents forchildren cultivate a like affection in the child. We have inthe Chinese Mother Goose a rhyme called the Little Orphan,which is a most pathetic tale. A little boy tells us that,

Like a little withered flower, That is dying in the earth, I was left alone at seven By her who gave me birth.

With my papa I was happy But I feared he'd take another, But now my papa's married, And I have a little brother.

And he eats good food, While I eat poor, And cry for my mother, Whom I'll see no more.

Such a rhyme cannot but develop the pathetic and sympatheticinstincts of the child, making it more kind and gentleto those in distress.

A girl in one of the rhymes urged by instinct and desire to chasea butterfly, gives up the idea of catching it, presumablyout of a feeling of sympathy for the insect.

Unfortunately all their rhymes do not have this samehigh moral tone. They indicate a total lack of respect for theBuddhist priests. This is not necessarily against the rhymeany more than against the priest, but it is an unfortunatedisposition to cultivate in children. There are constantsallies at the shaved noddle of the priest. They speak ofhis head as a gourd, and they class him with the tiger as a

beast of prey.

Some of the rhymes illustrate the disposition of the Chinese tonickname every one, from the highest official in the empire tothe meanest beggar on the street. One of the great men of thepresent dynasty, a prime minister and intimate friend of theemperor, goes by the name of Humpbacked Liu. Another may beCross-eyed Wang, another Club-footed Chang, another Bald-headedLi. Any physical deformity or mental peculiarity may give him hisnickname. Even foreigners suffer in reputation from this nationalbad habit.

A man whose face is covered with pockmarks is ridiculed bychildren in the following rhyme, which is only a sample of whatmight be produced on a score of other subjects:

Old pockmarked Ma, He climbed up a tree, A dog barked at him, And a man caught his knee, Which scared old Poxey Until he couldn't see.

A well-known characteristic of the Chinese is to do thingsopposite to the way in which we do them. We accusethem of doing things backwards, but it is we who deservesuch blame because they antedated us in the doing of them.We shake each other's hands, they each shake their ownhands. We take off our hats as a mark of respect, theykeep theirs on. We wear black for mourning, they wearwhite. We wear our vests inside, they wear theirs outside.A hundred other things more or less familiar to us all,illustrate this rule. In some of their nursery rhymes everythingis said and done on the "cart before the horse" plan.This is illustrated by a rhyme in which when the speakerheard a disturbance outside his door he discovered it wasbecause a "dog had been bitten by a man." Of course,he at once rushed to the rescue. He "took up the doorand he opened his hand." He "snatched up the dog andthrew him at a brick." The brick bit his hand and he leftthe scene "beating on a horn and blowing on a drum."

Tongue twisters are as common in Chinese as in English, and areequally appreciated by the children. From the nature of suchrhymes, however, it is impossible to translate them into any

other language.

In one of these children's songs, a cake-seller informs thepublic in stentorian tones that his wares will restore sight tothe blind and that

They cure the deaf and heal the lame, And preserve the teeth of the aged dame.

They will further cause hair to grow on a bald head andgive courage to a henpecked husband. A girl who has beenwhipped by her mother mutters to herself how she wouldlove and serve a husband if she only had one, even going tothe extent of calling that much-despised mother-in-law hermother, and when overheard by her irate parent and askedwhat she was saying, she answers:

I was saying the beans are boiling nice And it's just about time to add the rice.

These are rather an indication of good cheer on the partof the children than lack of filial affection. A parent mustbe cruel indeed to make a girl willing to give up her motherfor a mother-in-law.

Another style of verses comes under the head of pure nonsenserhymes. They are wholly without sense and I am not sure they aregood nonsense. They are popular, however, with the children, andcritics may say what they will, but the children are the lastcourt of appeal in case of nursery rhymes. Let me give one:

There's a cow on the mountain, the old saying goes, On her legs are four feet, on her feet are eight toes. Her tail is behind on the end of her back, And her head is in front on the end of her neck.

The Chinese nursery is well provided with rhymespertaining to certain portions of the body. They have rhymesto repeat when they play with the five fingers, and otherswhen they pull the toes; rhymes when they take hold ofthe knee and expect the child to refrain from laughing, nomatter how much its knee is tickled; rhymes which correspondto all our face and sense; rhymes where the foreheadrepresents the door and the five senses various otherthings, ending, of course, by tickling the child's neck.

All of these have called forth rhymes among Chinesechildren similar to "little pig went to market," "foreheadbender, eye winker," etc. The parent, or the nurse, takinghold of the toes of the child, repeats the following rhyme,as much to the amusement of the little Oriental as the"little pig" has always been to our own children:

This little cow eats grass, This little cow eats hay, This little cow drinks water, This little cow runs away, This little cow does nothing, Except lie down all day. We'll whip her.

And, with that, she playfully pats the little bare foot. If it isthe hand that is played with the fingers are taken hold of oneafter another, as the parent, or nurse, repeats the followingrhyme:

This one's old, This one's young This one has no meat; This one's gone To buy some hay, And this one's on the street.

There are various forms of this rhyme, depending uponthe place where it is found. The above is the Shantungversion. In Peking it is as follows:

A great, big brother, And a little brother, too,A big bell tower, And a temple and a show, And little baby wee, wee, Always wants to go.

The following rhyme explains itself: The nurse knocks on theforehead, then touches the eye, nose, ear, mouth and chinsuccessively, as she repeats:

Knock at the door, See a face, Smell an odor, Hear a voice, Eat your dinner, Pull your chin, or Ke chih, ke chih.

Tickling the child's neck with the last two expressions.

We have in English a rhyme:

If you be a gentleman, As I suppose you be, You'll neither laugh nor smile With a tickling of your knee.

I had tried many months to find if there were any finger,face or body games other than those already given. Our own nurseinsisted that she knew of none, but one day I noticed hergrabbing my little girl's knee, while she was saying:

One grab silver, Two grabs gold, Three don't laugh, And you'll grow old.

There is no literature in China, not even in the sacredbooks, which is so generally known as their nurseryrhymes. These are understood and repeated by the educatedand the illiterate alike; by the children of princes andthe children of beggars; children in the city and children inthe country and villages, and they produce like results inthe minds and hearts of all. The little folks laugh over theCow, look sober over the Little Orphan, absorb the moralstaught by the Mouse, and are sung to sleep by the song ofthe Little Snail.

Sometimes however they, like children in other lands, areskeptical as to the reality of the stories told in the songs.Thus I remember once hearing our old nurse telling a number

of stories and singing a number of songs to the little folk inthe nursery. They had accepted one after anotherthe legends as they rolled off the old woman's tongue,without question, but pretty soon she gave them a versionof a Wind Song which aroused their incredulity. She sang:

Old grandmother Wind has come from the East. She's ridden a donkey--a dear little beast. Old mother-in-law Rain has come back again. She's come from the North on a horse, it is plain.

Old grandmother Snow is coming you know, From the West on a crane--just see how they go. And old aunty Lightning has come from the South, On a big yellow dog with a bit in his mouth.

"There is no grandmother Wind, is there, nurse?"

"No, of course not, people only call her grandmother Wind."

"Why do they call the other mother-in-law Rain?"

"I suppose, because mothers-in-law are often disagreeable,

just like rainy weather."

"And why do they speak of snow and the crane, and lightning and ayellow dog?"

"I suppose, because a crane is somewhat the color of snow, and ayellow dog swift and the color of lightning."

CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE

Before going to China, I could not but wonder, when Isaw a Chinese or Japanese doll, why it was they made suchunnatural looking things for babies to play with. On reachingthe Orient the whole matter was explained by my firstsight of a baby. The doll looks like the child!

Nothing in China is more common than babies. Nothingmore helpless. Nothing more troublesome. Nothing moreattractive. Nothing more interesting.

A Chinese baby is a round-faced little helpless humananimal, whose eyes look like two black marbles over whichthe skin had been stretched, and a slit made on the bias.His nose is a little kopje in the centre of his face, above ayawning chasm which requires constant filling to insure thepreservation of law and order. On his shaved head are leftsmall tufts of hair in various localities, which give him theappearance of the plain about Peking, on which the travelersees, here and there, a small clump of trees around a countryvillage, a home, or a cemetery; the remainder of the countrybeing bare. These tufts are usually on the "soft spot," in theback of his neck, over his ears, or in a braid or a ring on theside of his head.

The amount of joy brought to a home by the birth of a childdepends upon several important considerations, chief among whichare its sex, the number and sex of those already in the family,and the financial condition of the home.

In general the Chinese prefer a preponderance of boys, but incase the family are in good circumstances and already haveseveral boys, they are as anxious for a girl as parents in anyother country.

The reason for this is deeper than the mere fact of sex.It is imbedded in the social life and customs of the people.A girl remains at home until she is sixteen or seventeen,during which time she is little more than an expense. Sheis then taken to her husband's home and her own familyhave no further control over her life or conduct. Sheloses her identity with her own family, and becomes partof that of her husband. This through many years andcenturies has generated in the popular mind a feeling thatit is "bad business raising girls for other people," andthere are not a few parents who would prefer to bring upthe girl betrothed to their son, rather than bring up theirown daughter.

"Selfishness!" some people exclaim when they read suchthings about the Chinese. Yes, it is selfishness; but lifein China is not like ours--a struggle for luxuries--but astruggle, not for bread and rice as many suppose, but forcornmeal and cabbage, or something else not more palatable.This is the life to which most Chinese children areborn, and parents can scarcely be blamed for preferring

boys whose hands may help provide for their mouths, togirls who are only an expense.

The presumption is that a Chinese child is born with thesame general disposition as children in other countries.This may perhaps be the case; but either from the treatmentit receives from parents or nurses, or because of thedisposition it inherits, its nature soon becomes changed,and it develops certain characteristics peculiar to theChinese child. It becomes t'ao ch'i. That almost meansmischievous; it almost means troublesome--a little tartar--but it means exactly t'ao ch'i.

In this respect almost every Chinese child is a little tyrant.Father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are all madeto do his bidding. In case any of them seems to be recalcitrant,the little dear lies down on his baby back on thedusty ground and kicks and screams until the refractoryparent or nurse has repented and succumbed, when he getup and good-naturedly goes on with his play and allowsthem to go about their business. The child is t'ao ch'i.

This disposition is general and not confined to any onerank or grade in society, if we may credit the stories that comefrom the palace regarding the present young EmperorKuang Hsu. When a boy he very much preferred foreignto Chinese toys, and so the eunuchs stocked the palacenursery with all the most wonderful toys the ingenuity andmechanical skill of Europe had produced. As he grewolder the toys became more complicated, being in the formof gramophones, graphophones, telephones, phonographs,electric lights, electric cars, cuckoo clocks, Swiss watchesand indeed all the great inventions of modern times. Theboy was t'ao ch'i, and the eunuchs say that if he werethwarted in any of his undertakings, or denied anything hevery much desired, he would dash a Swiss watch, or anythingelse he might have in his hand, to the floor, breakingit into atoms; and as there was no chance of using the rodthere was no way but to spoil the child.

It is amusing to listen to the women in a Chinese homewhen a baby comes. If the child is a boy the parents arecongratulated on every hand because of the "great happiness"that has come to their home. If it is a girl, and thereare more girls than boys in the family, the old nurse goes

about as if she had stolen it from somewhere, and when sheis congratulated, if congratulated she happens to be, shesays with a sigh and a funereal face, "Only a 'small happiness'--but that isn't bad."

When a child is born it is considered one year old, and its yearsare reckoned not from its birthdays but from its New Year's days.If it has the good fortune to be born the day before two days oldit is reckoned two years old being one year old when born and twoyears old on its first New Year's day.

The first great event in a child's life occurs when it isone month old. It is then given its first public reception.Its head is shaved amid kicking and screaming, its mother is upand around where she can receive the congratulations of herfriends, its grandmother is the honored guest of the occasion,andthe baby is named.

All the relatives and friends are invited and every one isexpected to take dinner with the child, and, which is moreimportant, to bring presents. If the family is poor, this dayputs into the treasury of life a day of happiness and a goodlyamount of filthy lucre. If the family is rich the presents arecorrespondingly rich, for nowhere either in Orient or Occidentcan there be found a people more lavish and generousin their gifts than the Chinese. All the family can affordis spent upon the dinner given on this occasion, with theassurance that they will receive in presents and moneymore than double the expense both of the dinner and thebirth of the child. If they do not "come" they are expectedto "send" or they "lose face." Among the middle-class, thepresents are of a useful nature, usually in the form of money,clothing or silver ornaments which are always worth their weightin bullion.

The name given the child is called its "milk" name until the boyenters school. Whether boy or girl it may answer a good part ofits life to the place it occupies in the family whether first,second or third.

If a girl she may be compelled to answer to "Little Slave," andif a boy to "Baldhead." But the names usually given indicate theplace or time of birth, the hope of the parent for the child, orexhibit the parent's love of beauty or euphony.

A friend who was educated in a school situated in FilialPiety Lane and who afterwards lived near Filial Piety Gatecalled his first son "Two Filials." Another friend had sonswhose names were "Have a Man," "Have a Mountain,""Have a Garden," "Have a Fish." In conversation withthis friend about the son whose "milk" name was "Havea Man," I constantly spoke of the boy by his "school"name, the only name by which I knew him. The old manwas perfectly blank--he knew not of whom I spoke, as hehad not seen his son since he got his school name. Finally,as it began to dawn on him that I was talking of his son, heasked:

"Whom are you talking about?"

"Your son."

"Oh, you mean 'Have a Man.' "

This same man had a little girl called "Apple," not anordinary apple, but the most luscious apple known to NorthChina. I have as I write a list of names commonly appliedto girls from which I select the following: BeautifulAutumn, Charming Flower, Jade Pure, Lucky Pearl, PreciousHarp, Covet Spring; and the parent's way of speaking ofhis little girl, when not wishing to be self-depreciative, is tocall her his "Thousand ounces of gold."

The names given to boys are quite as humiliating or aselevating as those given to girls. He may be Number One,Two or Three, Pig, Dog or Flea, or he may be like WuT'ing Fang a "Fragrant Palace," or like Li Hung Chang, an"Illustrious Bird" or "Learned Treatise."

During the summer-time in North China the child goesalmost if not completely naked. Until it is five years old,its wardrobe consists largely of a chest-protector and a pairof shoes. In the winter-time its trousers are quilted, withfeet attached, its coat made in the same way, and it isanything but "clean and sweet." The odor is not unlike thatof an up-stairs back room in a narrow alley at Five Points,in which dwell a whole family of emigrants.

When the Chinese child is ill he does not have the samekind of hospital accommodations, nursing and medical skill

at his command as do we in the West. His bed is brick,his pillow stuffed with bran or grass-seed, he has no sheets,his food is coarse and ill-adapted to a sick child's stomach.While his nurse may be kind, gentle and loving she is notalways skillful, and as for the ability of his physician let thefollowing child's song tell us:

My wife's little daughter once fell very ill, And we called for a doctor to give her a pill. He wrote a prescription which now we will give her, In which he has ordered a mosquito's liver. And then in addition the heart of a flea, And half pound of fly-wings to make her some tea.

When the child begins to walk and talk it begins to beinteresting. Its father has a little push cart made by whichit learns to walk, and the nurse goes about the court withit repeating ba ba, ma ma, (notice that these words for papaand mama are practically the same in Chinese as in English,the b being substituted for p), and all the various wordswhich mean elder brother, younger brother, elder andyounger sisters, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, grandmothers,and cousins and all the various relatives which may befound in its family, village or home.

It is not an easy matter to learn the names of one'srelatives in China, as there is a separate name for each showingwhether the person whom we call uncle is father ormother's elder or younger brother or the husband of theirelder or younger sister. When it comes to learning thenames of all one's cousins it is quite a difficult affair.Suppose, for instance, you were to introduce me to your cousin,and I wanted to know which one, you might explain thathe is the son of your mother's elder brother. In China theword you used for cousin would express the exact idea.The child begins his study of language by learning all theserelationships.

These are for the most part taught them by the nurse,who is an important element in the Chinese home and auseful adjunct to the child. Each little girl in the homes ofthe better classes has her own particular nurse, who teachesher nursery songs in her childhood, is her companion duringher youth, goes with her to her husband's home, when she

marries presumably to prevent her becoming lonesome, and remainswith her through life. In conversation with thegranddaughters of a duke and their old nurse, I discoveredthat the same games the little children play upon the street,they play in the seclusion of their green-tiled palace, and thesame nursery songs that entice Morpheus to share the matshed of the beggar's boy, entice him also to share the silkencouch of the emperor in the palace.

When a boy is old enough, he grows a queue, which takesthe place in the life of the Chinese boy which his first pair oftrousers does in that of the American or English boy. It isone of the first things he lives for; and he should not bedespised for wearing his hair in this fashion, especially whenwe remember that George Washington and Lafayette andtheir contemporaries wore their hair in a braid down theirbacks.

Besides the queue has a great variety of uses. It serveshim in some of the games he plays. When I saw the boysin geometry use their queues to strike an arc or draw a circle,it reminded me of my college days when I had forgotten totake a string to class. The laborer spreads a handkerchiefor towel over his head, wraps his queue around it andmakes for himself a hat. The cart driver whips his mulewith it; the beggar uses it to scare away the dogs; thefather takes hold of his little boy's queue instead of his handwhen walking with him on the street, or the child followsholding to his father's queue, and the boys use it as reinswhen they play horse. I saw this amusingly illustrated onthe streets of Peking. Two boys were playing horse.Now I have always noticed that when a boy plays horse, itis not because he has any desire to be the horse, but thedriver. He is willing to be horse for a time, in order that hemay be allowed to be driver for a still longer time. A largeboy was playing horse with a smaller one, the latter actingas the beast of burden. This continued for some time, when thesmaller, either discovering that a horse is larger than a man, orthat it is more noble to be a man than a horse, balked, and said:

"Now you be horse."

The older was not yet inclined to be horse, and tried invain, by coaxing, scolding and whipping, to induce him tomove, but the horse was firm. The driver was also firm, and not

until the horse in a very unhorselike manner, gave away to tears,could the man be induced to let himself down to the level of ahorse. From all of which it will be seen that the disposition ofChinese children is no exception to that longing for superioritywhich prevails in every human heart.

All kinds of trades, professions, and employments haveas great attraction for Chinese as for American children. Acountry boy looks forward to the time when he can standup in the cart and drive the team. Children seeing abattalion of soldiers at once "organize a company." Thiswas amusingly illustrated by a group of children in Pekingduring the Chinese-Japanese war. Each had a stick or aweed for a gun, except the drummer-boy, who was providedwith an empty fruit-can. They went through variousmaneuvres, for practice, no doubt, and all seemed to be going onbeautifully until one of those in front shouted,in a voice filled with fear:

"The Japanese are coming, the Japanese are coming."

This was the signal for a general retreat, and the children,in imitation of the army then in the field, retreated indisorder and dismay in every direction.

The Chinese boys and girls are little men and women. At an earlyage they are familiar with all the rules of behaviour whichcharacterize their after life and conduct. Their clothes are cuton the same pattern, out of cloth as those of their parents andgrandparents. There are no kilts and knee-breeches, pinafores andshort skirts, to make them feel that they are little people.

But they are little people as really and truly as are thechildren of other countries. A gentleman in reviewing my"Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes" speaks of some of theillustrations which "present the Chinese children playingtheir sober little games." Why we should call such a gameas "blind man's buff," "e-ni-me-ni-mi-ni-mo," "this littlepig went to market" or "pat-a-cake" "sober little games,"unless it is because of preconceived notions of the Chinesepeople I do not understand. The children are dignified littlepeople, but they enjoy all the attractions of child-life asmuch as other children do.

It is a mistake to suppose that the life of Chinese children

is a doleful one. It is understood, of course, that their lifeis not the same, nor to be compared with that of childrenin Europe or America: and it should be remembered furtherthat the pleasures of child-life are not measured by thegratification of every childish whim. Many of the littlestreet children who spend a large part of their time inefforts to support the family, when allowed to go to a fairor have a public holiday enjoy themselves more in a singleday than the child of wealth, in a whole month of idleness.

In addition to his games and rhymes, the fairs which areheld regularly in the great Buddhist temples in differentparts of the cities, are to the Chinese boy what a countryfair, a circus or Fourth of July is to an American farmer'sboy or girl. He has his cash for candy or fruit, his crackerswhich he fires off at New Year's time, making day a timeof unrest, and night hideous. Kite-flying is a pleasurewhich no American boy appreciates as does the Chinese, apleasure which clings to him till he is three-score years andten, for it is not uncommon to find a child and his grandfatherin the balmy days of spring flying their kites together.He has his pet birds which he carries around in cages or ona perch unlike any other child we have ever seen. He hashis crickets with which he amuses himself--not "gambles"--and his gold fish which bring him days and years ofdelight. Indeed the Chinese child, though in the vastmajority of cases very poor, has ample provision for a verygood time, and if he does not have it, it must be his ownfault.

Statements about the life of the children, however, maybe nothing more than personal impressions, and are usuallycolored as largely by the writer's prejudices as by theconditions of the children. Some of us are so constituted as tosee the dark side of the picture, others the bright. Let usgo with the boys and girls to their games. Let us playwith their toys and be entertained by the shows that entertainthem, and see if they are not of the same flesh andblood, heart and sentiment as we. We shall find that theboys and girls live together, work together, study together,play together, have their heads shaved alike and quarrelwith each other until they are seven years old, the periodwhich brings to an end the life of the Chinese child. Fromthis period it is the boy or the girl.

GAMES PLAYED BY BOYS

Children's games are always interesting. Chinese gamesare especially so because they are a mine hithertounexplored. An eminent archdeacon once wrote: "The Chineseare not much given to athletic exercises." A well-knowndoctor of divinity states that, "their sports do not requiremuch physical exertion, nor do they often pair off, or choosesides and compete, in order to see who are the bestplayers," while a still more prominent writer tells us that,"active, manly sports are not popular in the South." Let ussee whether these opinions are true.

Two years ago a letter from Dr. Luther Gulick, at presentconnected with the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y., came tous while in Peking, asking that we study into the characterof Chinese children's games. Dr. Gulick was preparing aseries of lectures on the "Psychology of Play." He desiredto secure as much reliable information as possible regardingthe play-life of the children of the East, in order that hemight discover what relation exists between the games ofOriental and those of Occidental children. By so doing hewould learn the effect of play on the mental and physicaldevelopment as well as the character of children, andthrough them upon the human race as a whole. We werefortunate in having at our disposal a large number ofstudents connected with Peking University, the preparatory,intermediate and primary schools, together with 150 girls inattendance at the girls' high school.

We received the letter at four o'clock, at which time thestudents had just been dismissed from school, and were takingtheir afternoon meal, but at 4:30 we went to the playground,notebook in hand, called together some of our most interestingboys, explained to them our object, and asked them to play forus. Some one may say that this was the worst possible thing todo, as it would make the children self-conscious and henceunnatural--the sequel, however, will show.

At first that was exactly what happened. The childrentittered, and looked at each other in blank astonishment,then one of them walked away and several others gatheredabout us. We repeated our explanation in order to securetheir interest, set their minds to work thinking up games,

and do away with the embarrassment, and it was only afew minutes before an intelligent expression began to appearin the eyes of some of the boys, and one of them, who wasalways ready for anything new, turned to his companion and said:

"You go and find Chi, and bring him here."

"Who is Chi?" we inquired.

"He is the boy who knows more games than any of the rest of us,"he explained.

Away he ran and soon reappeared with a very unpromisinglooking boy whom we recognized as a street waif that had beentaken into what some one called our "raggedy school" a few yearsbefore. He was a glum looking boy--a boy without a smile. Therewas a set expression on his face which might be interpreted as"life is not worth living," or, which would be an equallylegitimate interpretation in the present instance, "these gamesare of no importance. If you want them we can play any number ofthem for you, but what will you do with them after you get them?"

All the crowd began at once to explain to Chi what we wanted,and he looked more solemn than ever, then we came to his rescue.

"Chi," we asked, "what kind of games do boys play?"

Slowly and solemnly Chi wound one leg around the other as heanswered:

"Lots of them."

This is the stereotyped answer that will come from anyChinaman to almost any question he may be asked aboutthings Chinese."For instance?" we further inquired.

"Forcing the city gates," he answered.

"Play it for me."

The boys at once appointed captains who chose sidesand they formed themselves into two lines facing eachother, those of each line taking fast hold of each other'shands. The boys on one side then sang:

He stuck a feather in his hat, And hurried to the town And children met him with a horse For the gates were broken down.

Then one from the other side ran with all his force,throwing himself upon the hands of the boys who hadsung, the object being to "break through," in which casehe took the two whose hands had been parted to "hisside," while if he failed to break through he had to remainon their side. The others then sang. One from this grouptried to break through their line, and thus they alternateduntil one side or the other was broken up.

The boys were panting and red in the face when thegame was over, a strong argument against the Chinese-are-not-much-given-to-vigorous-exercise theory.

"Now play something which does not require so muchexercise," we requested.

Every one looked at Chi, not that the other boys did notknow the games, but simply because this matter-of-factboy was their natural leader in this kind of sport.

"Blind man," he said quietly.

At once a handkerchief was tied around the eyes of one of theboys who was willing to be "blind man," and a game correspondingalmost exactly to our own "blind man's buff" was played, withoutthe remotest embarrassment, but with as much naturalness asthough neither teacher nor spectator was near them.

"Have you any other games which require strength?"we inquired.

"Man-wheel," said Chi in his monosyllabic way.

"Play it, please."

"Go and call Wei-Yuan," to one of the smaller boys.

The boy ran off to find the one indicated, and Chi

selected two other middle-sized and two small boys.When Wei-Yuan, a larger but very good-natured, kindly-dispositioned lad, came, the two middle-sized boys stoodbeside him, one facing north, the other south, and caughteach other's hand over Wei-Yuan's shoulder. The twosmaller boys then stood beside these two, each of whomclutched hold of the small boys' girdles, who in turnclutched their girdles and Wei-Yuan took their disengagedhands. Thus the five boys were firmly bound together.The wheel then began to turn, the small boys were graduallylifted from the ground and swung or whirled aroundin an almost horizontal position.

"This game requires more strength," Chi explained, "than anyother small boys' game."

"Have you any games more vigorous than this?"

"Pitching the stone lock, and lifting the stone dumb-bells, butthey are for men."

"What is that game you were playing a few days ago inwhich you used one stick to knock another?"

"One is striking the stick, and another is knocking the stick."

"Play one of them."

Chi drew two lines on the ground eight feet apart, on oneof which he put a stick. He then threw another stick at it,the object being to drive it over the other line. He whofirst succeeds in driving it over the line wins the game.The sticks are ten to fifteen inches long.

Striking the stick is similar to tip-cat which we haveoften seen played by boys on the streets of New York. Thechildren mark out a square five or six feet on each side.The striker takes a position inside, with his feet spread apartas wide as possible, to give him a better command of thesquare. One of the others places the block in the positionwhich he supposes will be most difficult for the striker tohit. The latter is then at liberty to twist around on onefoot, placing the other outside the square, in order if possibleto secure a position from which he can strike to advantage.He then throws a stick about fifteen inches long at

the block to drive it out of the square. If he fails, the onewho placed the block takes the stick, and another places theblock for him. If he succeeds he has the privilege of strikingthe block three times as follows: He first strikes itperpendicularly, which causes it to bound up two or three feet,when he hits it as one would hit a ball, driving it as far aspossible. This he repeats three times, and if he succeedsin driving it the distance agreed upon, which may be 20,50, 200, 300, 500 or more feet, he wins the game. If nothe brings back the block and tries again, continuingto strike until he fails to drive it out of the square. Thisgame develops ingenuity in placing the block and skill,in striking, and is one of the most popular of all boys'games.

When they had finished striking the stick one of thesmaller children went over to where Chi was standing andwhispered in his ear. The expression of his face remainedas unchangeable as that of a stone image, as he called out:

"Select fruit."

The boys danced about in high glee, selected two captainswho chose sides, and they all squatted down in two rowstwenty feet apart. Each boy was given the name of somekind of fruit, such as apples, pears, peaches, quinces orplums, all of which are common about Peking. The captainon one side then blindfolded one of his boys, whileone from the other group arose and stealthily walked overand touched him, returning to his place among his owngroup and taking as nearly as possible the position he hadwhen the other was blindfolded. In case his companionsare uncertain as to whether his position is exactly the same,they all change their position, in order to prevent the oneblindfolded from guessing who it was who left his place.

The covering was then removed from his eyes, he wentover to the other side, examined carefully if perchance hemight discover, from change of position, discomfort insquatting, or a trace of guilt in the face or eyes of any ofthem, a clue to the guilty party. He "made faces" to tryto cause the guilty one to laugh. He gesticulated, grimaced,did everything he could think of, but they looked blank andunconcerned, or all laughed together, allowing no telltale lookto appear on their faces. His pantomimes sometimes

brought out the guilty one, but in case they did not, his lastresort was to risk a guess, and so he made his selection. If hewas right he took the boy to his side; if wrong, he stayedon their side. One of their side was then blindfolded,and the whole was repeated until one group or the other lost allits men. The game is popular among girls as well as boys.

"Do you have any other guessing games?" we asked Chi.

"Yes, there is point at the moon or the stars," he answered, "andblind man is also a guessing game."

By this time the boys had become enthusiastic, and had entirelyforgotten that they were playing for us or indeed for anypurpose. It was a new experience, this having their games takenin a notebook, and each was anxious not only that he play well,but that no mistake be made by any one. The more Chi realized theimportance of playing the games properly the more solemn hebecame, if indeed it were possible to be more solemn than was hisnormal condition. He now changed to a game of an entirelydifferent character from those already played. Those developedstrength, skill or curiosity; this developed quick reaction inthe players.

"What shall we play?" inquired one of the boys.

"Queue," answered Chi.

Immediately every boy jerked his queue over his shoulderand began to edge away from his companions. But as hewalked away from one he drew near another, and a suddencalling of his name would so surprise him that in turninghis head to see who spoke his short queue would be jerkedback over his shoulder and he received a dozen slaps fromhis companions, all of whom were waiting for just such anopportunity. This is the object of the game--to catch aboy with his queue down his back. Some of the boys, morespry than others, would move away to a distance, and then asthough all unconsciously, allow their queue to hang downthe back in its natural position, depending upon their fleetnessor their agility in getting out of the way or bringing thequeue around in front. This game is peculiarly interestingand caused much hilarity. At times even the solemn faceof Chi relaxed into a smile.

"Honor," called out Chi, and as in the circus when theringmaster cracks his whip, everything changed. The boyseach hooked the first finger of his right hand with that ofhis companion and then pulled until their fingers brokeapart, when they each uttered the word "Honor." Thismust not be spoken before they broke apart, but as soon aspossible after, and he who was first heard was entitled toan obeisance on the part of the other. Those who failedthe first trial sat down, and those who succeeded paired offand pulled once more, and so on until only one was left,who, as in the spelling-bees of our boyhood days, becamethe hero of the hour.

Chi, however, was not making heroes, or was it that hedid not want to hurt the feelings of those who were lessagile; at any rate he called out "Hockey," and the boys atonce snatched up their short sticks and began playing at agame that is not unlike our American "shinny," a gamewhich is so familiar to every American boy as to makedescription unnecessary--the principal difference betweenthis and the American game being that the boys all try toprevent one boy from putting a ball into what they call thebig hole, which, like the others, tended to develop quicknessof action in the boys.

I was familiar with the fact that there are certain gameswhich tend to develop the parental or protective instinct inchildren, while certain others develop the combative anddestructive, as for instance playing with dolls develops themother-instinct in girls; tea-parties, the love of society; andpaper dolls teach them how to arrange the furniture in theirhouses; while on the other hand, wrestling, boxing, sparring,battles, and all such amusements if constantly engaged in byboys, tend to make them, if properly guided and instructed, braveand patriotic; but if not properly led, cause them to bequarrelsome, domineering, cruel, coarse and rough, and I wonderedif the Chinese boys had any such games.

"Chi," I asked, "do you have any such games as host and guest, orgames in which the large boys protect the small ones?"

"Host and guest," said Chi.

The boys at once arranged themselves promiscuously over

the playground, and with a few peanuts, or sour dateswhich they picked up under the date trees, with all theceremony of their race, they invited the others to dine withthem. After playing thus for a moment, Chi called out:

"Roast dog meat."

The children gathered in a group, put the palms of theirhands together, squatted in a bunch or ring, and placed theirhands together in the centre to represent the pot. The boyon the left of the illustration represents Mrs. Wang, theguest of the occasion, while Chi himself stands on the rightwith his hand on the head of one of the boys. Chi walkedaround the ring while he sang:

Roast, roast, roast dog meat, The second pot smells bad, The little pot is sweet, Come, Mrs. Wang, please, And eat dog meat.

He then invited Mrs. Wang to come and partake of a dinnerof dog meat with him, and the following conversationensued.

I cannot walk. I'll hire a cart for you. I'm afraid of the bumping. I'll hire a sedan chair for you. I'm afraid of the jolting. I'll hire a donkey for you. I'm afraid of falling off. I'll carry you. I have no clothes. I'll borrow some for you. I have no hair ornaments. I'll make some for you. I have no shoes. I'll buy some for you.

This conversation may be carried on to any length,according to the fertility of the minds of the children, theexcuses of Mrs. Wang at times being very ludicrous. Allthese, however, being met, the host carries her off on hisback to partake of the dainties of a dog meat feast.

"What were you playing a few days ago when all the boys lay in astraight line?"

"Skin the snake."

The boys danced for glee. This was one of their favorite games.

They all stood in line one behind the other. They bentforward, and each put one hand between his legs and thusgrasped the disengaged hand of the boy behind him.

Then they began backing. The one in the rear lay downand they backed over astride of him, each lying down as hebacked over the one next behind him with the other's headbetween his legs and his head between the legs of hisneighbor, keeping fast hold of hands. They were thuslying in a straight line.

The last one that lay down then got up, and as he walkedastride the line raised each one after him until all were up,when they let go hands, stood straight, and the game wasfinished.

"Have you any other games which develop the protective instinctin boys?" we inquired of Chi.

"The hawk catching the young chicks," said the matter-of-factboy, answering my question and directing the boys at the sametime.

The children selected one of their number to represent thehawk and another the hen, the latter being one of the largestand best natured of the group, and one to whom the smallboys naturally looked for protection.

They formed a line with the mother hen in front, eachclutching fast hold of the others' clothing, with a large activeboy at the end of the line.

The hawk then came to catch the chicks, but the motherhen spread her wings and moved from side to side keepingbetween the hawk and the brood, while at the same timethe line swayed from side to side always in the opposite

direction from that in which the hawk was going. Everychick caught by the hawk was taken out of the line untilthey were all gone.

One of the boys whispered something to Chi.

"Strike the poles," exclaimed the latter.

As soon as they began playing we recognized it as a game we hadalready seen.

The boys stood about four feet apart, each having a stick four orfive feet long which he grasped near the middle. As they repeatedthe following rhyme in concert they struck alternately the upperand lower ends of the sticks together, occasionally halfinverting them and thus striking the upper ends together in anunderhand way. They struck once for each accented syllable of thefollowing rhyme, making it a very rhythmical game.

Strike the stick, One you see. I'll strike you and you strike me. Strike the stick, Twice around, Strike it hard for a good, big sound. Strike it thrice, A stick won't hurt. The magpie wears a small white shirt. Strike again. Four for you. A camel, a horse, and a Mongol too. Strike it five-- Five I said, A mushroom grows with dirt on its head. Strike it six Thus you do, Six good horsemen caught Liu Hsiu. Strike it seven For 'tis said A pheasant's coat is green and red. Strike it eight, Strike it right, A gourd on the house-top blossoms white. Strike again, Strike it nine,

We'll have some soup, some meat and wine. Strike it ten, Then you stop, A small, white blossom on an onion top.

Chi did not wait for further suggestion from any one, but calledout:

"Throw cash."

The boys all ran to an adjoining wall, each took a cashfrom his purse or pocket, and pressing it against the wall,let it drop. The one whose cash rolled farthest away tookit up and threw it against the wall in such a way as to makeit bound back as far as possible.

Each did this in turn. The one whose cash boundedfarthest, then took it up, and with his foot on the placewhence he had taken it, he pitched or threw it in turn ateach of the others. Those he hit he took up. When hemissed one, all who remained took up their cash and struckthe wall again, going through the same process as before.The one who wins is the one who takes up most cash.

This seemed to call to mind another pitching game, forChi said once more in his old military way:

"Pitch brickbats."

The boys drew two lines fifteen feet apart. Each took apiece of brick, and, standing on one line pitched to see whocould come nearest to the other.

The one farthest from the line set up his brick on the lineand the one nearest, standing on the opposite line, pitchedat it, the object being to knock it over.

If he failed he set up his brick and the other pitched at it.

If he succeeded, he next pitched it near the other, hoppedover and kicked his brick against that of his companion,knocking it over. Then he carried it successively on hishead, on each shoulder, on back and breast (walking), inthe bend of his thigh and the bend of his knee (hopping),and between his legs (shuffling), each time dropping it on

the other brick and knocking it over.

Finally he marked a square enclosing the brick, eighteeninches each side, and hopped back and forth over bothsquare and brick ten times which constituted him winner ofthe game.

Chi had become so expert in pitching and dropping thebrick as to be able to play the game without an error. Theshuffling and hopping often caused much merriment.

"What is that game," we inquired of Chi, "the boys onthe street play with two marbles?"

Without directly answering my question Chi turned to the boys andsaid:

"Kick the marbles."

The boys soon produced from somewhere,--Chinese boyscan always produce anything from anywhere,--two marblesan inch and a half in diameter. Chi put one on the ground,and with the toe of his shoe upon it, gave it a shove. Thenplacing the other, he shoved it in the same way, the objectbeing to hit the first.

There are two ways in which one may win. The firstboy says to the second, kick this marble north (south, eastor west) of the other at one kick. If he succeeds he wins,if he fails the other wins.

If he puts it north as ordered, he may kick again to hitthe other ball, in which case he wins again. If he hits theball and goes north, as ordered, at one kick, he wins double.

Each boy tries to leave the balls in as difficult a positionas possible for his successor; and here comes in a peculiaritywhich leaves this game unique among the games of the world. Ifthe position in which the balls are left is too difficult for theother to play he may refuse to kick and the first is compelled toplay his own difficult game--or like Haman--to hang on his owngallows. It recognizes the Chinese golden rule of not doing toothers what you would not have them do to you.

The boys spent a long time playing this game--indeed they seemed

to forget they were playing for us, and we were finally compelledto call them off.

Chi had turned the marbles over to the others as soon ashe had fairly started it, and stood in that peculiar fashion ofhis with one leg wound around the other, and when wecalled to them, he simply said as though it were the nextpart of the same game:

"Kick the shoes."

The boys all took off their shoes--an easy matter for anOriental--and piled them in a heap. At a given sign theyall kicked the pile scattering the shoes in every direction,and each snatched up, and, for the time, kept what he got.Those who were very agile got their own shoes, or a pairwhich would fit them, while those who were slow onlysecured a single shoe, and that either too large or too small.It was amusing to see a large-footed boy with a small shoe,and a boy with small feet having a shoe or shoes much toolarge for him.

The game was a good test of the boys' agility.

On consulting our watch we found it would soon be time for theboys to enter school, but asked them to play one more game.

"Cat catching mice," said Chi.

The children selected one of their company to represent the catand another the mouse.

The remainder formed a ring with the mouse inside andthe cat outside, and while the ring revolved, the followingconversation took place:

"What o'clock is it?" "Just struck nine."

"Is the mouse at home?" "He's about to dine."

All the time the mouse was careful to keep as far as possiblefrom the cat.

The ring stopped revolving and the cat popped in at thisside and the mouse out at the other. It is one of the rulesof the game that the cat must follow exactly in the footstepsof the mouse. They wound in and out of the ring for some time butat last the mouse was caught and "eaten," the eating processbeing the amusing part of the game. It is impossible to describeit as every "cat" does it differently, and one of the virtues ofa cat is to be a good eater.

The boys continued to play until the bell rang for theevening session. They referred to many different gameswhich they had received from Europeans, but played onlythose which Chi had learned upon the street before heentered school. This was repeated day after day, until wehad gathered a large collection of their most common, andconsequently their best, games, the number of which wasan indication of the richness of the play life of Chinese boys.

Another peculiarly interesting fact was the leadership ofChi. The Chinese boy, like the Chinese man is a genuinedemocrat and is ready to follow the one who knows what heis about and is competent to take the lead, with little regardto social position. It is the civil service idea of a genuinedemocracy ingrained in childhood.

GAMES PLAYED BY GIRLS

After having made the collection of boys' games weundertook to obtain in a similar way, fullest informationconcerning games played by the girls. Of course, it wasimpossible to do it alone, for the appearance of a manamong a crowd of little girls in China is similar to that of ahawk among a flock of small chicks--it results in a titteringand scattering in every direction, or a gathering together ina dock under the shelter of the school roof or the wings ofthe teacher. One of the teachers, however, Miss EffieYoung, kindly consented to go with us, and a goodlynumber of the small girls, after a less than usual amount oftittering and whispering, gathered about us to see what waswanted. The smallest among them was the most brave,and Miss Young explained that this was a "little streetwaif" who had been taken into the school because she hadneither home nor friends, with the hope that somethingmight be done to save her from an unhappy fate.

"Do you know any games?" we asked her.

She put her hands behind her, hung her head, shuffledin an embarrassed manner, and answered: "Lots of them."

"Play some for me."

This small girl after some delay took control of the partyand began arranging them for a game, which she called "goingto town," similar to one which the boys called "pounding rice."Two of the girls stood back to back, hooked their arms, and asone bent the other from the ground, and thus alternating, theysang:

Up you go, down you see, Here's a turnip for you and me; Here's a pitcher, we'll go to town; Oh, what a pity, we've fallen down.

At which point they both sat down back to back, their arms stilllocked, and asked and answered the following questions:

What do you see in the heavens bright? I see the moon and the stars at night. What do you see in the earth, pray tell? I see in the earth a deep, deep well. What do you see in the well, my dear? I see a frog and his voice I hear. What is he saying there on the rock? Get up, get up, ke'rh kua, ke'rh kua.

They then tried to get up, but, with their arms locked,they found it impossible to do so, and rolled over and gotup with great hilarity.

This seemed to suggest to our little friend another game,which she called "turning the mill." The girls took holdof each other's hands, just as the boys do in "churningbutter," but instead of turning around under their arms theyturn half way, put one arm up over their head, bringingtheir right or left sides together, one facing one directionand one the other; then, standing still, the following dialoguetook place:

Where has the big dog gone? Gone to the city. Where has the little dog gone? Run away.

Then, as they began to turn, they repeated:

The big dog's gone to the city; The little dog's run away; The egg has fallen and broken, And the oil's leaked out, they say. But you be a roller And hull with power, And I'll be a millstone And grind the flour.

As soon as this game was finished our little friendarranged the children against the wall for another game.Everything was in readiness. They were about to begin,when one of the larger girls whispered something in herear. She stepped back, put her hands behind her, hungher head and thought a moment.

"Go on," we said.

"No, we can't play that; there is too much bad talk in it."This is one of the unfortunate features of Chinese children'sgames and rhymes. There is an immense amount of bad talk in them.

She at once called out:

"Meat or vegetables."

Each girl began to scurry around to find a pair of oldshoes, which may be picked up almost anywhere in China,and putting one crosswise of the other, they let them fall.The way they fell indicated what kind of meat or vegetablesthey were. If they both fell upside down they were the big blacktiger. If both fell on the side they were double beans.If one fell right side up and the other on its side they werebeans. If both were right side up they were honest officials.(What kind of meat or vegetables honest officials are it isdifficult to say, but that never troubles the Chinese child.)If one is right side and the other wrong side up they aredogs' legs. If the toe of one rests on the top of the other,

both right side up and at right angles, they form a darkhole or an alley.

The child whose shoes first form an alley must throw apebble through this alley--that is, under the toe of the shoe--three times, or, failing to do so, one of the number takesup the shoes, and standing on a line, throws them all backover her head. Then she hops to each successively, kickingit back over the line, each time crossing the line herself, untilall are over. In case she fails another tries it in the sameway, and so on, till some one succeeds. This one then takesthe two shoes of the one who got the alley, and, hangingthem successively on her toe, kicks them as far as possible.The possessor of the shoes, starting from the line, hops toeach, picks it up and hops back over the line with it, whichends the game. It is a vigorous hopping game for little girls.

The girls were pretty well exhausted when this game was over andwe asked them to play something which required less exercise.

"Water the flowers," said the small leader.

Several of them squatted down in a circle, put their handstogether in the centre to represent the flowers. One of theirnumber gathered up the front of her garment in such a way as tomake a bag, and went around as if sprinkling water on theirheads, at the same time repeating:

"I water the flowers, I water the flowers, I water them morning and evening hours, I never wait till the flowers are dry, I water them ere the sun is high."

She then left a servant in charge of them while she wentto dinner. While she was away one of them was stolen.

Returning she asked: "How is this that one of my flowers isgone?"

"A man came from the south on horseback and stole onebefore I knew it. I followed him but how could I catch aman on horseback?"

After many rebukes for her carelessness, she again sang:

"A basin of water, a basin of tea, I water the flowers, they're op'ning you see."

Again she cautioned the servant about losing any of theflowers while she went to take her afternoon meal, but anotherflower was stolen and this time by a man from the west.

When the mistress returned, she again scolded the servant,after which she sang:

"A basin of water, another beside, I water the flowers, they're opening wide."

This was continued until all the flowers were gone. Onehad been taken by a carter, another by a donkey-driver,another by a muleteer, another by a man on a camel, andfinally the last little sprig was eaten by a chicken. Theservant was soundly berated each time and cautioned to bemore careful, which she always promised but neverperformed, and was finally dismissed in disgrace without eithera recommendation, or the wages she had been promised when hired.

The game furnishes large opportunity for invention on the part ofthe servant, depending upon the number of those to be stolen.This little girl seemed to be at her wit's end when she gave asthe excuse for the loss of the last one that it had been eaten bya chicken.

This game suggested to our little friend another which proved tobe the sequel to the one just described, and she called out:

"The flower-seller."

The girl who had just been dismissed appeared from behind thecorner of the house with all the stolen "flowers," each holdingto the other's skirts. At the same time she was calling out:

"Flowers for sale, Flowers for sale, Come buy my flowers Before they get stale."

The original owner hereupon appeared and called to her:

"Hey! come here, flower-girl, those flowers look like mine," and

she took one away.

The flower-seller did not stop to argue the question buthurried off crying:

"Flowers for sale," etc.

The original owner again called to her:

"Ho! flower-seller, come here, those flowers are certainly mine,"whereupon she took them all and whipped the flower-seller who ranaway crying.

As the little flower-seller ran away crying in her sleeve,she stumbled over an old flower-pot that lay in the schoolcourt. This accident seemed to act as a reminder to ourlittle leader for she called out,

"Flower-pot."

The girls divided themselves into companies of three and stood inthe form of a triangle, each with her left hand holding the righthand of the other, their hands being crossed in the centre.

Then by putting the arms of two back of the head of the thirdshe was brought into the centre (steps into the well), and bystepping over two other arms, she goes out on the oppositeside, so that whereas she was on the left side of this andthe right side of that one, she now stands on the right side ofthis and the left side of that girl. In the same way the secondand third girls go through, and so on as long as they wish tokeep up the game, saying or singing the following rhyme:

You first cross over, and then cross back, And step in the well as you cross the track, And then there is something else you do, Oh, yes, you make a flower-pot too.

By this time the girls had lost most of their strangenessor embarrassment and continued the flower-pot until wewere compelled to remind them that they were playing forus. Everybody let go hands and the little general called out,

"The cow's tail."

One girl with a small stick in her hand squatted down pretendingto be digging and the others took a position one behind the othersimilar to the hawk catching the chicks. They walked up to thegirl digging and engaged in the following conversation:

"What are you digging?" "Digging a hole." "What is it for?" "My pot for to boil." "What will you heat?" "Some water and broth." "How use the water?" "I'll wash some cloth. "What will you make?" "I'll make a bag." "And what put in it?" "A knife and a rag." "What is the knife for?" "To kill your lambs." "What have they done?" "They've eaten my yams." "How high were they?" "About so high." "Oh, that isn't high." "As high as the sky."

"What is your name?" "My name is Grab, what is your name?" "My name is Turn.""Turn once for me."

They all walked around in a circle and as they turned they sang:

"We turn about once, Or twice I declare, And she may grab, But we don't care."

"Can't you grab once for us?" "Yes, but what I grab I keep."

She then ran to "grab" one of the "lambs" but they kept behindthe front girl just as the boys did in the hawk catching thechicks. After awhile however, they were all caught.

Why this game is called "cow's tail" and the girls called"lambs," we do not know. We asked the girls why andtheir answer was, "There is no reason."

The girls were panting with the running before they wereall caught and we suggested that they rest awhile, butinstead the little leader called out:

"Let out the doves."

One of the larger girls took hold of the hands of two ofthe smaller, one of whom represented a dove and the othera hawk. The hawk stood behind her and the dove in front.

She threw the dove away as she might pitch a bird intothe air, and as the child ran it waved its arms as though theywere wings. She threw the hawk in the same way, and itfollowed the dove.

She then clapped her hands as the Chinese do to bringtheir pet birds to them, and the dove if not caught, returnedto the cage. This is a very pretty game for little children.

By this time the girls were all rested and our little friendsaid:

"Seek for gold."

Three or four of the girls gathered up some pebbles,squatted down in a group and scattered them as they woulda lot of jackstones. Then one drew her finger between twoof the stones and snapped one against the other. If she hitit the two were taken up and put aside.

She then drew her finger between two more and snapped them.

If she missed, another girl took up what were left,scattered them, snapped them, took them up, and so on until oneor another got the most of the pebbles and thus won the game.Our little friend was reminded of another and she called out:

"The cow 's eye."

Immediately the girls all sat down in a ring and put their feet

together in the centre. Then one of their number repeated thefollowing rhyme, tapping a foot with each accented syllable.

One, two, three, and an old cow's eye, When a cow s eye's blind she'll surely die. A piece of skin and a melon too, If you have money I'll sell to you, But if you're without, I'll put you out.

The foot on which her finger happened to rest when she said "out"was excluded from the ring. Again she repeated the rhymeexcluding a foot with each repetition till all but one were out.

Up to this point all the children were in a nervous quiverwaiting to see which foot would be left, but now the funbegan, for they took the shoe off and every one slappedthat unfortunate foot. This was done with good-naturedvigor but without intention to hurt. It was amusing to seethe children squirm as they neared the end of the game.

This game finished, the little girl called out:

"Pat your hands and knees."

The girls sat down in pairs and, after the style of "BeanPorridge Hot," clapped hands to the following rhyme:

Pat your hands and knees, On January first, The old lady likes to go a sightseeing most. Pat your hands and knees, On February second, The old lady likes a piece of candy it is reckoned. Pat your hands and knees, On March the third, The old lady likes a Canton pipe I have heard. Pat your hands and knees, On April fourth, The old lady likes bony fish from the north. Pat your hands and knees, The fifth of May, The old lady likes sweet potatoes every day. Pat your hands and knees, The sixth of June,

The old lady eats fat pork with a spoon. Pat your hands and knees, The seventh of July, The old lady likes to eat a fat chicken pie. Pat your hands and knees, On August eight, The old lady likes to see the lotus flowers straight. Pat your hands and knees, September nine, The old lady likes to drink good hot wine. Pat your hands and knees, October ten,

The old lady, you and I, may meet hope again.

This we afterwards discovered is very widely known throughout thenorth of China.

The foregoing are a few of the games played by thechildren in Peking. In that one city we have collectedmore than seventy-five different games, and have no reasonto believe we have secured even a small proportion of whatare played there. Games played in Central and South Chinaare different, partly because of climatic conditions, partlybecause of the character of the people. There, as here, thegames of children are but reproductions of the employmentsof their parents. They play at farming, carpentry, house-keeping, storekeeping, or whatever employments theirparents happen to be engaged in. Indeed, in addition tothe games common to a larger part of the country, thereare many which are local, and depend upon the employmentof the parents or the people.

THE TOYS CHILDREN PLAY WITH

One day while sitting at table, with our little girl, nineteenmonths old, on her mother's knee near by, we picked upher rubber doll and began to whip it violently. The childfirst looked frightened, then severe, then burst into tears andplead with her mother not to "let papa whip dolly."

Few people realize how much toys become a part of thelife of the children who play with them. They are oftenlooked upon as nothing more than "playthings for children."

This is a very narrow view of their uses andrelationships. There is a philosophy underlying theproduction of toys as old as the world and as broad as life, aphilosophy which, until recent years, has been little studiedand cultivated.

Playthings are as necessary a constituent of human life asfood or medicine, and contribute in a like manner to thehealth and development of the race. Like the science ofcooking and healing, the business of toy-making has beendriven by the stern teacher, necessity, to a rapidself-development for the general good of the little men and womenin whose interests they are made.

They are the tools with which children ply their trades;the instruments with which they carry on their professions;the goods which they buy and sell in their business, and theparaphernalia with which they conduct their toy society.They are more than this. They are the animals which servethem, the associates who entertain them, the children whocomfort them and bring joy to the mimic home.

Toys are nature's first teachers. The child with his littleshovels, spades and hoes, learns his first lessons inagriculture; with his hammer and nails, he gets his firstlessons in the various trades; and the bias of the life of many achild of larger growth has come from the toys with which heplayed. Into his flower garden the father of Linnaeusintroduced his son during his infancy, and "this little gardenundoubtedly created that taste in the child which afterwardsmade him the first botanist and naturalist of his age, if notof his race."

No experiments in any chemical laboratory will excitemore wonder or be carried on with more interest, than thosewhich the boy performs with his pipe and basin of soapywater. The little girl's mud pies and other sham confectioneryfurnish her first lessons in the art of preparing food.Her toy dinners and playhouse teas offer her the firstexperiences in the entertainment of guests. With her dolls,the domestic relations and affections.

No science has ever originatedmand been carried to anydegree of perfection in Asia. There is no reason why thisstatement should cause the noses of Europeans and Americans

to twitch in derision and pride, for there is another factequally momentous in favor of the Asiatics,--viz., no religionthat originated outside of Asia has ever been carried to anydegree of perfection.

The above facts will indicate that we need not hope tofind the business of toy-making, or the science of child-education in a very advanced state in China--the mostAsiatic country of Asia. Child's play and toy-making havebeen organized into a business and a science in Europe, asastronomy, which had been studied so long in Asia, wasdeveloped into a science by the Greeks. And so we findthat what is taught in the kindergarten of the West islearned in the streets of the East; and the toys which aremanufactured in great Occidental business establishments,are made by poor women in Oriental homes, and the samemistakes are made by the one as by the other.

The same whistle by which the cock crows, enables thedog to bark, the baby to cry, the horse to neigh, the sheepto bleat and the cow to low, just as in our own rubbergoods. The same end is accomplished in the one case as inthe other. The two, three or twenty cash doll does for theChinese girl what the two, three or twenty dollar one doesfor her antipodal sister,--develops the instinct of motherhood,besides standing a greater amount of rough handling.Nevertheless it usually comes to the same deplorable end,departing this world, bereft of its arms and legs, withoutgoing through the tedious process of a surgical operation.

Chinese toys are less varied, less complicated, less true tothe original, and less expensive than those of the West,--more perhaps like the toys of a century or two ago. Neverthelessthey are toys, and in the hands of boys and girls,the drum goes "rub-a-dub," the horn "toots," and thewhistle squeaks. The "gingham dog and calico cat," besidesa score of other animals more nearly related to the soilof their native place--being made of clay--express themselvesin the language of the particular whistle which happensto have been placed within them. All this is to theentire satisfaction of "little Miss Muffet" and "little boyBlue," just as they do in other lands.

When the children grow older they have tops to spin thatwhistle as good a whistle, and buzzers to buzz that buzz as

good a buzz, and music balls to roll, and music carts to pull,that emit sounds as much to their satisfaction, as anythingthat ministered to the childish tastes of our grandfathers;and these become as much a part of their business and theirlife as if they were living, talking beings. Furthermore,their dolls are as much their children as they themselves arethe offspring of their parents.

Chinese toys embrace only those which involve no intricatescientific principles. The music boxes of the West areunknown in China except as they are imported. TheChinese know nothing about dolls which open and shuttheir eyes, simple as this principle is, nor of toys which areself-propelling by some mysterious spring secreted within,because, forsooth, they know nothing about making the spring.

There are some principles, however, which, though theymay not understand, they are nevertheless able to utilize;such, for instance, as the expansion of air by heat, and thecreation of air currents. This principle is utilized inlanterns. In the top of these is a paper wheel attached to across-bar on the ends of which are suspended paper menand women together with animals of all kinds making avery interesting merry-go-round. These lantern-figurescorrespond to the sawyers, borers, blacksmiths, washersand others which twenty or more years ago were on top ofthe stove of every corner grocery or country post-office.

When we began the study of Chinese toys our first movewas to call in a Chinese friend whom we thought we couldtrust, and who could buy toys at a very reasonable rate,and sent him out to purchase specimens of every variety oftoys he could find in the city of Peking. We ordered himthe first day to buy nothing but rattles, because the rattleis the first toy that attracts the attention of the child.

In the evening Mr. Hsin returned with a good-sizedbasket full of rattles. Some were tin in the form of smallcylinders, with handles in which were small pebbles: otherswere shaped like pails; and others like cooking pots and pans.

Some of the most attractive were hollow wood balls,baskets, pails and bottles, gorgeously painted, with longhandles, necks, or bails. The paint was soon transferred

from the face of the toy to that of the first child thathappened to play with it, which child was of course, our ownlittle girl.

The most common rattles representing various kinds offowls and animals known and unknown are made of clay.Others are in the form of fat little priests that make onethink of Santa Claus, or little roly-poly children that looklike the little folks who play with them.

As the child grows larger the favorite rattle is a drum-shaped piece of bamboo or other wood, with skin--notinfrequently fish skin, stretched over the two ends, and a longhandle attached. On the sides are two stout strings withbeads on the ends, which, when the rattle is turned in thehand, strike on the drum heads. These rattles of brass ortin as well as bamboo, are in imitation of those carried bystreet hawkers.

We said to Mr. Hsin, "Foreigners say the Chinese do nothave dolls, how is that?"

"They have lots of them," he answered in the stereotyped way.

"Then to-morrow buy samples of all the dolls you can find."

"All?" he asked with some surprise.

"Yes, all. We want to know just what kind of dolls they have."

The next evening Mr. Hsin came in with an immenseload of dolls. He had large, small, and middle sized rag dolls,on which the nose was sewed, the ears pasted, and theeyes and other features painted. They were rude, but asinteresting to children as other more natural and moreexpensive ones, as we discovered by giving one of them toour little girl. In not a few instances Western childrenhave become much more firmly attached to their Chinesecloth dolls than any that can be found for them in Americaor Europe.

He had a number of others both large and small withpaper mache heads, leather bodies, and clay arms and legs.The body was like a bellows in which a reed whistle wasplaced, that enabled the baby to cry in the same tone as the

toy dog barks or the cock crows. They had "real hair" inspots on their head similar to those on the child, and theywere dressed in the same kind of clothing as that used on thebaby in summer-time, viz., a chest-protector and a pair ofshoes or trousers.

Mr. Hsin then took out a small package in which waswrapped a half-dozen or more "little people," as they arecalled, by the Chinese, with paper heads, hands and feet,exquisitely painted, and their clothing of the finest silk.Attached to the head of each was a silk string by which the"little people" are hung upon the wall as a decoration.

"But what are these, Mr. Hsin?" we asked. "These are not dolls."

"No," he answered, "these are cloth animals. The children playwith these at the same time they play with dolls."

He had gone beyond our instructions. He had broughtus a large collection of camels made of cloth the color ofthe camel's skin, with little bunches of hair on the head,neck, hump and the joints of the legs, similar to those on thecamel when it is shedding its coat in the springtime. He hadelephants made of a grayish kind of cloth on which wereharnesses similar to those supposed to be necessary for thoseanimals. He had bears with bits of hair on neck and tailand a leading string in the nose; horses painted with spotsof white and red, matched only by the most remarkableanimals in a circus; monkeys with black beads for eyes, andlong tails; lions, tigers, and leopards, with large, savage,black, glass eyes, with manes or tails suited to each, andproperly crooked by a wire extending to the tip. Andfinally he laid the bogi-boo, a nondescript with a head oneach end much like the head of a lion or tiger. When notused as a plaything, this served the purpose of a pillow.

"Do the Chinese have no other kinds of toy animals?" we inquired.

"Yes," he answered, "I'll bring them to-morrow."

The following evening he brought us a collection of claytoys too extensive to enumerate. There were horses, cows,camels, mules, deer, and a host of others the original of whichhas never been found except in the imagination of the people.He had women riding donkeys followed by drivers, men riding

horses and shooting or throwing a spear at a fleeing tiger, andwomen with babies in their arms while grandmother amused themwith rattles, and father lay near by smoking an opium pipe.

From the bottom of his basket he brought forth a nuber of smallpackages.

"What are in those?"

"These are clay insects."

They were among the best clay work we have seen inChina. There were tumble-bugs, grasshoppers, large beetles,mantis, praying mantis, toads and scorpions, together with othersnever seen outside of China, and some never seen at all, the legsand feelers all being made of wire.

In another package he had a dozen dancing dolls. Theywere made of clay, were an inch and a half long, dressedwith paper, and had small wires protruding the sixteenth ofan inch below the bottom of the skirt. He put them all ona brass tray, the edge of which he struck with a small stickto make it vibrate, thus causing the dancers to turn roundand round in every direction.

The next package contained a number of clay beggars.Two were fighting, one about to smash his clay pot overthe other's head: another had his pot on his head for a lark,a third was eating from his, while others were carrying theirsin their hand. One had a sore leg to which he called attentionwith open mouth and pain expressed in every feature.

From another package he brought out a number ofjumping jacks, imitations as it seemed of things Japanese.There were monkey acrobats made of clay, wire and skin,fastened to a small slip of bamboo. A doll fastened to astick, with cymbals in its hands would clash the cymbals,when its queue was pulled. Finally there was a largedragon which satisfied its raging appetite by feeding upontwo or three little clay men specially prepared for hisconsumption.

But, perhaps, among the most interesting of his toys were hisclay whistles. Some of these burnt or sun-dried toys werehollow and in the shape of birds, beasts and insects. When blown

into, they would emit the shrillest kind of a whistle. In othersa reed whistle had been placed similar to those in the dolls, andthese usually had a bellows to blow them. Whether cock or hen,dog or child, they all crowed, barked, cackled, or cried in theself-same tone.

"What will you get to-morrow?"

"Drums, knives, and tops," said Mr. Hsin. He was being paid bythe day for spending our money, and so had his plans well laid.

The following evening he brought a large collection of toy drums,some of which were in the shape of a barrel, both in their lengthand in being bulged out at the middle. On the ends were paintedgay pictures of men and women clad in battle-array or festivegarments, making the drum a work of art as well as an instrumentof torture to those who are disturbed by noises about the house.

He had large knives covered with bright paint which could easilybe washed off, and tridents, with loose plates or cymbals, whichmake a noise to frighten the enemy.

The tops Mr. Hsin had collected were by far the most interesting.Chinese tops are second to none made. They are simple, being madeof bamboo, are spun with a string, and when properly operatedemit a shrill whistle.

The ice top, without a stem, and simply a block of wood in shapeof a top, is spun with a string, but is kept going by whipping.

Another toy which foreigners call a top is entirely differentfrom anything we see in the West. The Chinese call ita K'ung chung, while the top is called t'o lo. It isconstructed of two pieces of bamboo, each of which is madelike a top, and then joined by a carefully turned axle, eachend being of equal weight, and looking not unlike thewheels of a cart. It is then spun by a string, which iswound once around the axle and attached to two sticks.A good performer is able to spin it in a great variety ofways, tossing it under and over his foot, spinning it withthe sticks behind him, and at times throwing it up into theair twenty or thirty feet and catching it as it comes down.The principle upon which it is operated is the quick jerkingof one of the sticks while the other is allowed to be loose.

"To-morrow," said Mr. Hsin, as he ceased spinning the top, "Iwill get you some toy carts."

The Chinese cart has been described as a Saratoga trunkon two wheels. This is, however, only one form--that ofthe passenger cart. There are many others, and all of themare used as patterns of toy carts. They all have a kind ofmusic-box attachment, operated by the turning of the axleto which the wheels of the toys, as well as those of some ofthe real carts, are fixed.

The toy carts are made of tin, wood and clay. Some ofthem are very simple, having paper covers, while otherspossess the whole paraphernalia of the street carts. Whenthe mule of the toy cart is unhitched and unharnessed, helooks like a very respectable mule. Nevertheless, instead ofdevouring food, he becomes the prey of insects. Usuallyhe appears the second season, if he lasts that long, bereft ofmane and tail, as well as a large portion of his skin.

The flat carts have a revolving peg sticking up throughthe centre, on which a small clay image is placed whichturns with the stick. Others are placed on wires on thetwo sides, to represent the driver and the passengers.

These in Peking are the omnibus carts. Running from the east gateof the Imperial city to the front gate, and in other parts of thecity as well, there are street carts corresponding to the omnibusor street cars of the West. These start at intervals of tenminutes, more or less, with eight or ten persons on a cart, thefare being only a few cash. Toy carts of this kind have six oreight clay images to represent the passengers.

Mr. Hsin brought out from the bottom of his basket anumber of neatly made little pug dogs, and pressing upon abellows in their body caused them to bark, just as the hencackled a few days before.

What we have described formed only a small portion ofthe toys Mr. Hsin brought. Cheap clay toys of all kindsare hawked about the street by a man who sells them at afifth or a tenth of a cent apiece. With him is often founda candy-blower, who with a reed and a bowl of taffy-candy is ready to blow a man, a chicken, a horse and cart,a corn ear, or anything else the child wants, as a glass-

blower would blow a bottle or a lamp chimney. The childplays with his prize until he tires of it and then he eats it.

BLOCK GAMES--KINDERGARTEN

It was on a bright spring afternoon that a Chinese official andhis little boy called at our home on Filial Piety Lane, inPeking.

The dresses of father and child were exactly alike--asthough they had been twins, boots of black velvet or satin,blue silk trousers, a long blue silk garment, a waistcoat ofblue brocade, and a black satin skullcap--the child was inevery respect, even to the dignity of his bearing, a vest-pocket edition of his father.

He had a T'ao of books which I recognized as the FifteenMagic Blocks, one of the most ingenious, if not the mostremarkable, books I have ever seen.

A T'ao is two or any number of volumes of a book wrapped in asingle cover. In this case it was two volumes. In the inside ofthe cover there was a depression three inches square in which waskept a piece of lead, wood or pasteboard, divided into fifteenpieces as in the following illustration.

These blocks are all in pairs except one, which is a rhomboid.They are all exactly proportional, having their sides eitherhalf-inch, inch, inch and a half, or two inches in length.

They are not used as are the blocks in our kindergartensimply to make geometrical figures, but rather to illustratesuch facts of history as will have a moral influence, or be anintellectual stimulus to the child.

He may build houses with them, or make such ancient ormodern ornaments, or household utensils, as may suit hisfancy; but the primary object of the blocks and the books,is to impress upon the child's mind, in the most forcibleway possible, the leading facts of history, poetry, mythologyor morals; while the houses, boats and other things aresimply side issues.

The first illustration the child constructed for me, for I

desired him to teach me how it was done, was a dragon horse, andwhen I asked him to explain it, he said that it represented theanimal seen by Fu Hsi, the original ancestor of the Chinesepeople, emerging from the Meng river, bearing upon its back a mapon which were fifty-five spots, representing the male and femaleprinciples of nature, and which the sage used to construct whatare called the eight diagrams.

The child tossed the blocks off into a pile and then constructeda tortoise which he said was seen by Yu, the Chinese Noah, comingout of the Lo river, while he was draining off the floods. On itsback was a design which he used as a pattern for the ninedivisions of his empire.

These two incidents are referred to by Confucius, and are amongthe first learned by every Chinese child.

I looked through the book and noticed that many of thedesigns were for the amusement of the children, as wellas to develop their ingenuity. In the two volumes of theT'ao he had only the outlines of the pictures which hereadily constructed with the blocks. But he had with himalso a small volume which was a key to the designs havinglines indicating how each block was placed. This he hadpurchased for a few cash. Much of the interest of the book,however, attached to the puzzling character of the pictures.

There was one with a verse attached somewhat like the following:

The old wife drew a chess-board On the cover of a book, While the child transformed a needle Into a fishing-hook.

Chinese literature is full of examples of men and womenwho applied themselves to their books with untiringdiligence. Some tied their hair to the beam of their humblecottage so that when they nodded with sleepiness the jerkwould awake them and they might return to their books.

Others slept upon globular pillows that when theybecame so restless as to move and cause the pillow to rollfrom under their head they might get up and study.

The child once more took the blocks and illustrated how one who

was so poor as to be unable to furnish himself with candles,confined a fire-fly in a gauze lantern using that instead of alamp. At the same time he explained that another who was perhapsnot able to afford the gauze lantern, studied by the light of aglowworm.

"K'ang Heng," said the child, as he put the blocks together in anew form, "had a still better way, as well as more economical.His house was built of clay, and as the window of his neighbor'shouse was immediately opposite, he chiseled a hole through hiswall and thus took advantage of his neighbor's light.

"Sun K'ang's method was very good for winter," continued thechild as he rearranged the blocks, "but I do not know what hewould do in summer. He studied by the light reflected from thesnow.

"Perhaps," he went on as he changed the form, "he followedthe example of another who studied by the pale light of themoon."

"What does that represent?" I asked him pointing to a child witha bowl in his hand who looked as if he might have been going tothe grocer's.

"Oh, that boy is going to buy wine."

The Chinese have never yet realized what a national evilliquor may become. They have little wine shops in thegreat cities, but they have no drinking houses correspondingto the saloon, and it is not uncommon to see a child goingto the wine shop to fetch a bowl of wine. The Buddhistpriest indulges with the same moderation as the official classor gentry. Indeed most of the drunkenness we read aboutin Chinese books is that of poets and philosophers, and inthem it is, if not commended, at least not condemned.The attitude of literature towards them is much like that ofThackeray towards the gentlemen of his day.

The child constructed the picture of a Buddhist priest, who, withstaff in hand, and a mug of wine, was viewing the beautifulmountains in the distance. He then changed it to one in which anintoxicated man was leaning on a boy's shoulder, the inscriptionto which said: "Any one is willing to assist a drunken man toreturn home."

"This," he went on as he changed his blocks, "is a picture of LiPei, China's greatest poet. He lived more than a thousand yearsago. This represents the closing scene in his life. He wascrossing the river in a boat, and in a drunken effort toget the moon's reflection from the water, he fell overboardand was drowned." The child pointed to the sail at thesame time, repeating the following:

The sail being set, He tried to get, The moon from out the main.

I noticed a large number of boat scenes and induced thechild to construct some of them for me, which he was quitewilling to do, explaining them as he went as readily as ourchildren would explain Old Mother Hubbard or the OldWoman who Lived in her Shoe, by seeing the illustrations.

Constructing one he repeated a verse somewhat like the following:

Alone the fisherman sat, In his boat by the river's brink, In the chill and cold and snow, To fish, and fish, and think.

Then he turned over to two on opposite pages, and as heconstructed them he repeated in turn:

In a stream ten thousand li in length He bathes his feet at night,

While on a mount he waves his arms, Ten thousand feet in height.

The ten thousand li in one couplet corresponds to theten thousand feet in the other, while the bathing of thefeet corresponds to the waving of the arms. Couplets ofthis kind are always attractive to the Chinese child as wellas to the scholar, and poems and essays are replete withsuch constructions.

The child enjoyed making the pictures. I tried to make

one, but found it very difficult. I was not familiar with theblocks. It is different now, I have learned how to makethem. Then it seemed as if it would be impossible ever todo so. When I had failed to make the picture I turned themover to him. In a moment it was done.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Chang Ch'i, the poet," he answered. "Whenever he went for a walkhe took with him a child who carried a bag in which to put thepoems he happened to write. In this illustration he stands withhis head bent forward and his hands behind his back lost inthought, while the lad stands near with the bag."

We have given in another chapter the story of the greattraveller, Chang Ch'ien, and his search for the source of theYellow River.

In one of the illustrations the child represented him in his boatin a way not very different from that of the artist.

Another quotation from one of the poets was illustrated asfollows:

Last night a meeting I arranged, Ere I my lamp did light, Nor while I crossed the ferry feared, Or wind or rain or night.

The child's eyes sparkled as he turned to some of thoseillustrating children at play, and as he constructed one whichrepresents two children swinging their arms and running,he repeated:

See the children at their play, Gathering flowers by the way.

"They are gathering pussy-willows," he added.

In another he represented a child standing before thefront gate, where he had knocked in vain to gain admission.As he completed it he said, pointing to the apricotover the door:

Ten times he knocked upon the gate, But nine, they opened not, Above the wall he plainly saw, A ripe, red apricot.

He continued to represent quotations from the poets and explainthem as he went along.

There was one which indicated that some one was ascendingthe steps to the jade platform on which the dust had settledas it does on everything in Peking; at the same time theverse told us that

Step by step we reach the platform, All of jade of purest green, Call a child to come and sweep it, But he cannot sweep it clean.

"You know," he went on, "the cottages of many of thepoets were near the beautiful lakes in central China, in thewild heights of the mountains, or upon the banks of someflowing stream. In this one the pavilion of the poet is onthe bank of the river, and we are told that,

In his cottage sat the poet Thinking, as the moon went by, That the moonlight on the water, Made the water like the sky."

Changing it somewhat he made a cottage of a different kind. Thiswas not made for the picture's sake, but to illustrate a sentenceit was designed to impress upon the child's mind. The quotationis somewhat as follows:

The ringing of the evening bells, The moon a crescent splendid, The rustling of the swallow's wings Betoken winter ended.

The child looked up at me significantly as he turned toone which represented a Buddhist priest. I expected something ofa joke at the priest's expense as in the nursery rhymes andgames, but there was none. That would injure the sale of thebook. The inscription told us that "a Buddhist lantern will

reflect light enough to illuminate the whole universe."

Turning to the next page we found a priest sitting infront of the temple in the act of beating his wooden drum,while the poet exclaims:

O crystal pool and silvery moon, So clear and pure thou art, There's nought to which thou wilt compare Except a Buddha's heart.

The child next directed our attention to various kinds offlowers, more especially the marigold. A man in a boat rows withone hand while he points backward to the blossoming marigold,while in another picture the poet tells us that,

Along the eastern wall, We pluck the marigold, While on the south horizon, The mountain we behold.

"What is that?" I asked as he turned to a picture of an old manriding on a cow.

"That is Laotze, the founder of Taoism, crossing the frontier atthe Han Ku Pass between Shansi and Shensi, riding upon a cow.Nobody knows where he went."

There were other pictures of Taoist patriarchs keeping sheep. Bytheir magic power they turned the sheep into stones when theywere tired watching them, and again the inscriptions told us,"the stones became sheep at his call." Still others representedthem in search of the elixir of life, while in others theywere riding on a snail.

The object of thus bringing in incidents from all theseBuddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and other sources is that bycatering to all classes the book may have wide distribution, andwhatever the Confucianist may say, it must be admitted that theother religions have a strong hold upon the popular mind.

The last twenty-six illustrations in Vol. I represent variousincidents in the life, history and employments of women.

The first of these is an ancient empress "weaving at night by her

palace window."

Another represents a woman in her boat and we are told that,"leaving her oar she leisurely sang a song entitled, 'Pluckingthe Caltrops.' "

Another represents a woman "wearing a pomegranate-coloreddress riding a pear-blossom colored horse." A peculiarcombination to say the least.

The fisherman's wife is represented in her boat, "making hertoilet at dawn using the water as a mirror." While we are assuredalso that the woman sitting upon her veranda "finds it verydifficult to thread her needle by the pale light of the moon,"which fact, few, I think, would question.

In one of the pictures "a beautiful maiden, in the brightmoonlight, came beneath the trees." This is evidently contrary toChinese ideas of propriety, for the Classic for girls tells usthat a maiden should not go out at night except in company with aservant bearing a lantern. As it was bright moonlight, however,let us hope she was excusable.

This sauntering about in the court is not uncommon if we believewhat the books say, for in the next picture we are told that:

As near the middle summer-house, The maiden sauntered by, Upon the jade pin in her hair There lit a dragon-fly.

The next illustration represented the wife of the famous poetSsu-Ma Hsiang-Ju in her husband's wine shop.

This poet fell in love with the widowed daughter of a wealthymerchant, the result of which was that the young couple elopedand were married; and as the daughter was disinherited by herirate parent, she was compelled to wait on customers in herhusband's wine shop, which she did without complaint. In spite oftheir imprudent conduct, and for the time, its unhappy results,as soon as the poet had become so famous as to be summoned tocourt, the stern father relented, and, as it was a case ofundoubted affection, which the Chinese readily appreciate theyhave always had the sympathy of the whole Chinese people.

One of the most popular women in Chinese history is Mu Lan, theA Chinese Joan of Arc. Her father, a great general, being too oldto take charge of his troops, and her brothers too young, shedressed herself in boy's clothing, enrolled herself in the army,mounted her father's trusty steed, and led his soldiers tobattle, thus bringing honor to herself and renown upon herfamily.

We have already seen how diligent some of the ancient worthieswere in their study. This, however, is not universal, for we aretold the mother of Liu Kung-cho, in order to stimulate her son tostudy took pills made of bear's gall and bitter herbs, to showher sympathy with her boy and lead him to feel that she waswilling to endure bitterness as well as he.

The last of these examples of noble women is that of the wife ofLiang Hung, a poor philosopher of some two thousand years ago. Aneffort was made to engage him to Meng Kuang, the daughter of arich family, whose lack of beauty was more than balanced by herremarkable intelligence. The old philosopher feared that familypride might cause domestic infelicity. The girl on her partsteadfastly refused to marry any one else, declaring that unlessshe married Liang Hung, she would not marry at all. Thisunexpected constancy touched the old man's heart and he marriedher. She dressed in the most common clothing, always preparedhis food with her own hand, and to show her affection andrespect never presented him with the rice-bowl without raising itto the level of her eyebrows, as in the illustration.

It may be interesting to see some of the ornaments andutensils the child made with his blocks. I shall thereforeadd three, a pair of scissors, a teapot, and a seal with aturtle handle.

Such is in general the character of the book the official'slittle boy had with him. I afterwards secured several copiesfor myself and learned to make all the pictures first shownme by the child, and I discovered that it is but one ofseveral forms of what we may call kindergarten work, thatit has gone through many editions, and is very widelydistributed. My own set contains 216 illustrations such as Ihave given.

CHILDREN'S SHOWS AND ENTERTAINMENTS

My little girl came running into my study greatly excitedand exclaiming:

"Papa, the monkey show, the monkey show. We want the monkey show,may we have it?"

Now if you had but one little girl, and she wanted a monkey showto come into your own court and perform for her and her littlefriends for half an hour, the cost of which was the modest sum offive cents, what would you do?

You would do as I did, no doubt, go out with the little girl,call in the passing showman and allow him to perform, which wouldserve the triple purpose of furnishing relaxation and instructionfor yourself, entertainment for the children, and business forthe showman.

This however proved to be not the monkey show but Punch and Judy,a species of entertainment for children, the exact counterpart ofour own entertainment of that name. It may be of interest toyoung readers to know how this show originated, and I doubt notit will be a surprise to some older ones to know that it datesback to about the year 1000 B. C.

We are told that while the Emperor Mu of the Chou dynasty wasmaking a tour of his empire, a skillful mechanic, Yen Shih byname, was brought into his presence and entertained him and thewomen of his seraglio with a dance performed by automatonfigures, which were capable not only of rhythmical movements oftheir limbs, but of accompanying their movements with songs.

During and at the close of the performance, the puppets cast suchsignificant glances at the ladies as to anger the monarch, and heordered the execution of the originator of the play.

The mechanic however ripped open the puppets, and proved to hisastonished majesty that they were only artificial objects, andinstead of being executed he was allowed to repeat hisperformance. This was the origin of the play in China whichcorresponds to Punch and Judy in Europe and America.

To the question which naturally arises as to how the play wascarried to the West, I reply, it may not have been carried toEurope at all, but have originated there. From marked

similarities in the two plays however, and more especially in themethods of their production, we may suppose that the ChinesePunch and Judy was carried to Europe in the following way:

Among the many traders who visited Central Asia while it wasunder the government of the family of Genghis Khan, were twoVenetian brothers, Maffeo and Nicolo Polo, whose wonderingdisposition and trading interests led them as far as the court ofthe Great Khan, where they remained in the most intimaterelations with Kublai for some time, and were finally sent backto Italy with a request that one hundred European scholars besent to China to instruct them in the arts of Europe.

This request was never carried out, but the two returnedto the Khan's court with young Marco, the son of one ofthem, who remained with the Mongol Emperor for seventeen years,during which time he had a better opportunity of observing theircustoms than perhaps any other foreigner since his time. Hisfinal return to Italy was in 1295, and a year or two later, hewrote and revised his book of travels.

The art of printing in Europe was discovered in 1438, and thefirst edition of Marco Polo's travels was printed about 1550-59.Our Punch and Judy was invented by Silvio Fiorillo an Italiandramatist before the year 1600. I have found no reference to theplay in Marco Polo's works, nevertheless, one cannot but thinkthat, if not a written, at least an oral, communication of theplay may have been carried to Europe by him or some other of theItalian traders or travellers. The two plays are very similar,even to the tones of the man who works the puppets.

In passing the school court on one occasion I saw thestudents gathered in a crowd under the shade of the trees.A small tent was pitched, on the front of which was a littlestage. A manager stood behind the screen from whichposition he worked a number of puppets in the form ofmen, women, children, horses and dragons. These weresuspended by black threads as I afterwards discovered fromsmall sticks or a framework which the manager manipulatedbehind the screen. When one finished its part of theperformance, it either walked off the stage, or the stick wasfastened in such a way as to leave it in a position conduciveto the amusement of the crowd. These were puppet shows, and wereput through entire performances or plays, the manager doing thetalking as in Punch and Judy.

After the performance several of the students passed around thehat, each person present giving one-fifth or one-tenth of a cent.

As I came from school one afternoon, the children had called infrom the street a showman with a number of trained mice. He haderected a little scaffolding just inside the gateway, at one sideof which there was a small rope ladder, and this with theinevitable gong, and the small boxes in which the mice were keptconstituted his entire outfit.

In the boxes he had what seemed to be cotton from the milk-weedwhich furnished a nest for the mice. These he took from theirlittle boxes one by one, stroked them tenderly, while heexplained what this particular mouse would do, put each one onthe rope ladder, which they ascended, and performed the tricksexpected of them. These were going through a pagoda, drawingwater, creeping through a tube, wearing a criminal's collar,turning a tread-mill, or working some other equally simple trick.

At times the mice had to be directed by a small stick in thehands of the manager, but they were carefully trained, kindlytreated, and much appreciated by the children.

Although less attractive, there is no other show which impressesitself so forcibly on the child's mind as the monkey, dog andsheep show.

The dog was the first to perform. Four hoops were placed on thecorners of a square, ten feet apart. The dog walked aroundthrough these hoops, first through each in order, then turningwent through each twice, then through one and retracing his stepswent through the one last passed through.

The showman drove an iron peg in the ground on which were twoblocks representing millstones. To the upper one was a lever bywhich the dog with his nose turned the top millstone as ifgrinding flour. He was hitched to a wheelbarrow, the handles ofwhich were held by the monkey, who pushed while the dog pulled.

The most interesting part of the performance, however, was by themonkey. Various kinds of hats and false faces were kept in a boxwhich he opened and secured. He stalked about with a cane in hishand, or crosswise back of his neck, turned handsprings, wentthrough various trapeze performances, such as hanging by his

legs, tail, chin, and hands, or was whirled around in the air.

The leading strap of the monkey was finally tied to the belt ofthe sheep which was led away to some distance and let go. Themonkey bounded upon its back and held fast to the wool, while thesheep ran with all its speed to the showman, who held a basin ofbroom-corn seed as a bait. This was repeated as often as thechildren desired, which ended the show. Time,--half an hour;spectators,--all who desired to witness it; price,--five cents.

The showmen in China are somewhat like the tramps and beggars inother countries. When they find a place where there are childrenwho enjoy shows, each tells the other, and they all call aroundin turn.

Our next show was an exhibition given by a man with a trainedbear.

The animal had two rings in his nose, to one of which wasfastened a leading string or strap, and to the other, whileperforming, a large chain. A man stood on one end of the chain,and the manager, with a long-handled ladle, or with his hand,gave the bear small pieces of bread or other food after eachtrick he performed.

The first trick was walking on his hind feet as if dancing. Butmore amusing than this to the children was to see him turnsummersaults both forward and backward. These were repeatedseveral times because they were easily done, and added to thelength of time the show continued.

Children, however, begin to appreciate at an early age whatis difficult and what easy, and it was not until he took acarrying-pole six feet long, put the middle of it upon hisforehead and set it whirling with his paws, that they began tosay:

"That's good," "That's hard to do," and other expressionsof a like nature.

They enjoyed seeing him stand on his front feet, or on hishead with his hind feet kicking the air, but they enjoyedstill more seeing him put on the wooden collar of a convictand twirl it around his neck. The manager gave him somebread and then tried to induce him to take it off, but he

whined for more bread and refused to do so. Finally hetook off the collar, and when they tried to take it from himhe put it on again. When he took it off the next time andoffered it to them they refused to receive it, but tried to gethim to put it on, which he stubbornly refused to do, andfinally threw it away.

His last trick was to sit down upon his haunches, stick up one ofhis hind feet, and twirl a knife six feet long upon it as he hadtwirled the carrying-pole upon his head. The manager said hewould wrestle with the men, but this was a side issue and onlydone when extra money was added to the regular price, which wastwelve cents.

One of the most common showmen seen on the streets of Peking,goes about with a framework upon his shoulder in the shape of asled, the runners of which are turned up at both ends. It seemedto me to be less interesting than the other shows, but as it ismore common, the children probably look upon it with more favor,and the children are the final critics of all things for thelittle ones.

The show was given by a man and two boys, one of whomimpersonated a girl. Small feet, like the bound feet of a girl,were strapped on like stilts, his own being covered by widetrousers, and he and the boy sang songs and danced to the musicof the drum and cymbals in the hands of the showman.

The second part of the performance was a boat ride on dry land.The girl got into the frame, let down around it a piece of clothwhich was fastened to the top, and took hold of the frame in sucha way as to carry it easily. The boy, with a long stick, pushedas if starting the boat, and then pulled as if rowing, and withevery pull of the oar, the girl ran a few steps, making it appearthat the boat shot forward. All the while the boy sang aboat-song or a love-ditty to his sweetheart.

Again the scene changed. The head and hind parts of a papiermache horse were fastened to the "tomboy" in such a way as tomake it appear that she was riding; a cloth was let down to hideher feet, and they ran to and fro, one in one direction and theother in the other, she jerking her unmanageable steed, and hesinging songs, and all to the music of the drum and the cymbals.

It sometimes happens that while the girl rides the horse, the boy

goes beside her in the boat, the rapidity and character of theirmovements being governed by the music of the manager.

The best part of the whole performance was that which goes by thename of the lion show. The girl took off her small feet andgirl's clothes and became a boy again. One of the boys stood upin front and put on an apron of woven grass, while the other bentforward and clutched hold of his belt. A large papier mache headof a lion was put on the front boy, to which was attached acovering of woven grass large enough to cover them both, while along tail of the same material was stuck into a frameworkfastened to the belt of the hinder boy.

The manager beat the drum, the lion stalked about the court,keeping step to the music, turning its large head in everydirection and opening and shutting its mouth, much to theamusement of the children.

There is probably no country in the world that has moretravelling shows specially prepared for the entertainment ofchildren than China. Scarcely a day passes that we do not hearthe drum or the gong of the showmen going to and fro, or standingat our court gate waiting to be called in.

JUVENILE JUGGLING

"How is that?"

"Very good."

"Can you do it?" asked the sleight-of-hand performer, as herolled a little red ball between his finger and thumb, pitched itup, caught it as it came down, half closed his hand and blew intoit, opened his hand and the ball had disappeared.

He picked up another ball, tossed it up, caught it in hismouth, dropped it into his hand, and it mysteriously disappeared.

The juggler was seated on the ground with a piece of blue clothspread out before him, on which were three cups, and five littlered wax balls nearly as large as cranberries.

He continued to toss the wax balls about until they had alldisappeared. We watched him closely, but could not discover where

they had gone. He then arose, took a small portion of my coatsleeve between his thumb and finger, began rubbing them together,and by and by, one of the balls appeared between his digits. Hepicked at a small boy's ear and got another of the balls. He blewhis nose and another dropped upon the cloth. He slapped the topof his head and one dropped out of his mouth, and he took thefifth from a boy's hair.

He then changed his method. He placed the cups' mouths down uponthe cloth, and under one of them put the five little balls. Whenhe placed the cup we watched carefully; there were no balls underit. When he raised it up, behold, there were the five littleballs.

He removed the cups from one place to another, and asked us toguess which cup the balls were under, but we were always wrong.

There was a large company of us, ranging from children of threeto old men and women of seventy-five, and from Chinese schoolboysto a bishop of the church, but none of us could discover how hedid it.

Later, however, I learned how the trick was performed. As heraised the cup with his thumb and forefinger, he inserted twoother fingers under, gathered up all the balls between them andplaced them under the cup as he put it down. While in making theballs disappear, he concealed them either in his mouth or betweenhis fingers.

The Chinese have a saying:

In selecting his balls from north to south, The magician cannot leave his mouth; And in rolling his balls, you understand, He must have them hidden in his hand.

Of quite a different character are the jugglers with platesand bowls. Not only children, but many of a larger growthdelight to watch these. Our only way of learning about them wasto call them into our court as the Chinese call them to theirs,and that is what we did.

The performer first put a plate on the top of a trident andset it whirling. In this whirling condition he put the tridenton his forehead where he balanced it, the trident whirling

with the plate as though boring into his skull.

He next took a bamboo pole six feet long, with a nail inthe end on which he set the plate whirling. The plate, ofcourse, had a small indentation to keep it in its place on thenail. He raised the plate in the air and inserted into thefirst pole another of equal length, then another and stillanother, which put the plate whirling in the air thirty feethigh.

Thus whirling he balanced it on his hand, on his arm, on histhumb, on his forehead, and finally in his mouth, after which hetossed the plate up, threw the pole aside and caught it as itcame down. The old manager standing by received the pole, but ashe saw the plate tossed up, he fell flat upon the earth,screaming lest the plate be broken.

This same performer set a bowl whirling on the end of achop-stick. Then tossing the bowl up he caught it invertedon the chop-stick, and made it whirl as rapidly as possible. Inthis condition he tossed it up ten, then fifteen, then twenty ormore feet into the air catching it on the chop-stick as it camedown.

He then changed the process. He tossed the bowl a foothigh, and struck it with the other chop-stick one, two, three,four or five times before it came down, and this he did sorapidly and regularly as to make it sound almost likemusic. There is a record of one of the ancient poets whowas able to play a tune with his bowl and chop-sticksafter having finished his meal. He may have done it in this way.

This trick seemed a very difficult performance. It excitedthe children, and some of the older persons clapped theirhands and exclaimed, "Very good, very good." But whenhe tossed it only a foot high and let go the chop-stick, makingit change ends, and catching the bowl, they were readyfor a general applause. In striking the bowl and thusmanipulating his chop-sticks, his hands moved almost asrapidly as those of an expert pianist.

"Can you toss the knives?" piped up one of the childrenwho had seen a juggler perform this difficult feat.

The man picked up two large knives about a foot long and began

tossing them with one hand. While this was going on a third knifewas handed him and he kept them going with both hands. At timeshe threw them under his leg or behind his back, and at othertimes pitched them up twenty feet high, whirling them as rapidlyas possible and catching them by the handles as they came down.

While doing this he passed one of the knives to the attendant whogave him a bowl, and he kept the bowl and two knives going. Thenhe gave the attendant another knife and received a ball, and theknife, the ball and the bowl together, the ball and bowl at timesmoving as though the former were glued to the bottom of thelatter.

These were not all the tricks he could perform but theywere all he would perform in addition to his bear show fortwelve cents--for this was the man with the bear--so thechildren allowed him to go.

Some weeks later they called in a different bear show. This bearwas larger and a better performer, but his tricks were about thesame.

The juggler in addition to doing all we have already describedperformed also the following tricks.

He first put one end of an iron rod fifteen inches long in hismouth. On this he placed a small revolving frame three by sixinches. He set a bowl whirling on the end of a bamboo splintfifteen inches long, the other end of which he rested on one sideof the frame, balancing the whole in his mouth.

While the bowl continued whirling, he took the frame offthe rod, stuck the bamboo in a hole in the frame an inchfrom the end, resting the other end of the frame on the rod,brought the bowl over so as to obtain a centre of gravityand thus balanced it.

He took two small tridents a foot or more in length, putthe end of the handle of one in his mouth, set the bowlwhirling on the end of the handle of the other, rested themiddle prong of one on the middle prong of the other andlet it whirl with the bowl. Afterwards he set the prong ofthe whirling trident on the edge of the other and let it whirl.

He took two long curved boar's teeth which were fastened on the

ends of two sticks, one a foot long, the other six inches. Theone he held in his mouth, the other having a hole diagonallythrough the stick, he inserted a chop-stick making an angle ofseventy degrees. He set the bowl whirling on the end of thechop-stick, rested one tooth on the other, in the indentation andthey whirled like a brace and bit.

Finally he took a spiral wire having a straight point oneach end. This he called a dead dragon. He set the bowlwhirling on one end, placing the other on the small framealready referred to. As the spiral wire began to turn asthough boring, he called it a living dragon. These feats ofbalancing excited much wonder and merriment on the partof the children.

The juggler then took an iron trident with a handle fourand a half feet long and an inch and a half thick, and,pitching it up into the air, caught it on his right arm as itcame down. He allowed it to roll down his right arm, across hisback, and along his left arm, and as he turned his body he keptthe trident rolling around crossing his back and breast andgiving it a new impetus with each arm. The trident had on it twocymbal-shaped iron plates which kept up a constant rattling.

This showman had with him three boy acrobats whose skill heproceeded to show.

"Pitch the balls," he said.

The largest of the three boys fastened a cushioned band, on whichwas a leather cup, around his head, the cup being on his foreheadjust between his eyes.

He took two wooden balls, two and a half inches in diameter,tossed them in the air twenty feet high, catching them in the cupas they came down. The shape of the cup was such as to hold theballs by suction when they fell. He never once missed. This isthe most dangerous looking of all the tricks I have seen jugglersperform.

"Shooting stars," said the showman.

The boy tossed aside his cup and balls and took a string six feetlong, on the two ends of which were fastened wooden balls twoand a half inches in diameter. He set the balls whirling in

opposite directions until they moved so rapidly as to stretch thestring, which he then held in the middle with finger and thumband by a simple motion of the hand kept the balls whirling.

He was an expert, and changed the swinging of the ballsin as many different ways as an expert club-swinger couldhis clubs.

"Boy acrobats," called out the manager, as the manipulator of the"shooting stars" bowed himself out amid the applause of thechildren.

The two smaller boys threw off their coats, hitched uptheir trousers--always a part of the performance whethernecessary or not--and began the high kick, high jump,handspring, somersault, wagon wheel, ending with hand-spring, and bending backwards until their heads touchedthe ground.

One of them stood on two benches a foot high, put ahandkerchief on the ground, and bending backwards, pickedit up with his teeth.

The two boys then clasped each other around the waist,as in the illustration, and each threw the other back over hishead a dozen times or more.

Exit the bear show with the boy acrobats, enter the oldwoman juggler with her husband who beats the gong.

This was one of the most interesting performances I haveever seen in China, perhaps because so unexpected.

The old woman had small, bound feet. She lay flat on herback, stuck up her feet, and her husband put a crock a footin diameter and a foot and a half deep upon them. She setit rolling on her feet until it whirled like a cylinder. Shetossed it up in such a way as to have it light bottom side upon her "lillies,"[1] in which position she kept it whirling.Tossing it once more it came down on the side, and againtossing it she caught it right side up on her small feet,keeping it whirling all the time.

[1] Small feet of the Chinese woman.

My surprise was so great that I gave the old woman tencents for performing this single trick.

The tricks of sleight-of-hand performers are well-nighwithout number. Some of them are easily understood,--surprising,however, to children--and often interesting to grown people,while others are very clever and not so easily understood.

Instead of the hat from which innumerable small packagesare taken, the Chinese magician had two hollow cylinders,which exactly fit into each other, that he took out of a boxand placed upon a cylindrical chest, and from these twocylinders--each of which he repeatedly showed us as beingwithout top or bottom and empty--he took a dinner ofa dozen courses.

He called upon the baker to bring bread, the grocer tobring vegetables, and after each call he took out of thecylinders the thing called for. He finally called the wineshop to bring wine, and removing both cylinders, heexposed to the surprised children a large crock of wine.

As he brought out dish after dish, the children looked inopen-mouthed wonder, and asked papa, mama or nurse,where he got them all, for they evidently were not in thecylinders. But papa saw him all the time manipulating thecrock in the cylinder which he did not show, and he knewthat all these things were taken from and then returned tothis crock, while instead of being full of wine, he had onlya cup of wine in a false lid which exactly fitted the mouthof the crock, and made it seem full.

When he had put away his crock and cylinders, he produced whatseemed to be two empty cups.

He presented them to us to show that they were empty,then putting them mouth to mouth, and placing them onthe ground, he left them a moment, when with a "prestochange," and a wave of the hand, he removed the top cupand revealed to the astonished children and some of thechildren of a larger growth, a cup full of water with two orthree little fish or frogs therein.

On inquiry I was told that he had the under cup covered

with a thin film of water-colored material, and that as heremoved the top cup he removed also the film which left thefish or frogs exposed to view.

This same juggler performed many tricks of producinggreat dishes of water from under his garments, the mereenumeration of which, might prove to be tiresome.

I was walking along the street one day near the mouth ofFilial Piety Lane where a large company of men and childrenwere watching a juggler, and from the trick I thought it worthwhile to invite him in for the amusement of the children. Hepromised to come about four o clock, which he did.

He first proceeded to eat a hat full of yellow paper, afterwhich, with a gag and a little puff, he pulled from his moutha tube of paper of the same color five or six yards long.

This was very skillfully performed and for a long time Iwas not able to understand how he did it. But after awhileI discovered that with the last mouthful of paper he put in asmall roll, the centre of which he started by puffing, andthis he pulled out in a long tube. He did it with so manygroanings and with such pain in the region of the stomach,that attention was directed either to his stomach or the roll,and taken away from his mouth.

"I shall eat these needles," said he, as he held up half adozen needles, "and then eat this thread, after which I shallreproduce them."

He did so. He grated his teeth together causing a soundmuch like that of breaking needles. He pretended to swallowthem, working his tongue back and forth in his tightlyclosed mouth, after which he drew forth the thread onwhich all the needles were strung.

He had a number of small white bone needles which hestuck into his nose and pulled out of his eyes, or which hepushed up under his upper lip and took out of his eyes orvice versa. How he performed the above trick I was notable to discover. He seemed to put them through the tearduct, but whether he did or not I cannot say. How he gotthem from his mouth to his eyes unless he had punctured apassage beneath the skin, is still to me a mystery.

His last trick was to swallow a sword fifteen inches long.The sword was straight with a round point and dull edges.There was no deception about this. He was an old manand his front, upper teeth were badly worn away by theconstant rasping of the not over-smooth sword. He simplyput it in his mouth, threw back his head and stuck it downhis throat to his stomach.

STORIES TOLD TO CHILDREN

One hot summer afternoon as I lay in the hammock tryingto take a nap after a hard forenoon's work and a heartylunch, I heard the same old nurse who had told me my firstChinese Mother Goose Rhymes, telling the following storyto the same little boy to whom she had repeated the "Mouseand the Candlestick."

She told him that the Chinese call the Milky Way theHeavenly River, and that the Spinning Girl referred to in thestory is none other than the beautiful big star in Lyra whichwe call Vega, while the Cow-herd is Altair in Aquila.

THE HEAVENLY RIVER, WITH THE PEOPLE WHO DWELL THEREON.

Once upon a time there dwelt a beautiful maiden in aquiet little village on the shore of the Heavenly River.

Her name was Vega, but the people of China have alwayscalled her the Spinning Maiden, because of her faithfulnessto her work, for though days, and months, and years passedaway, she never left her loom.

Her diligence so moved the heart of her grandfather, theKing of Heaven, that he determined to give her a vacation,which she at once decided to spend upon the earth.

In a village near where the maiden dwelt there was ayoung man named Altair, whom the Chinese call the Cow-herd.

Now the Cow-herd was in love with the Spinning Girl, butshe was always so intent upon her work as never to givehim an opportunity to confess his affection, but now he

determined to follow her to earth, and, if possible, win her forhis bride.

He followed her through the green fields and shadygroves, but never dared approach her or tell her of his love.

At last, however, the time came. He discovered herbathing in a limpid stream, the banks of which werecarpeted with flowers, while myriad boughs of blossomingpeach and cherry trees hid her from all the world but him.

He secretly crept near and stole away and hid her garments madeof silken gauze and finely woven linen, makingit alike impossible for her to resist his suit or to return toher celestial home.

She yielded to the Cow-herd and soon became his wife,and as the years passed by a boy and girl were born to them,little star children, twins, such as are seen near by theSpinning Girl in her heavenly home to-day.

One day she went to her husband, and, bowing low, requested thathe return the clothes he had hid away, and he, thinking thepresence of the children a sufficient guaranty for her remainingin his home, told her he had put them in an old, dry well hard bythe place where she had been bathing.

No sooner had she secured them than the aspect of theirhome was changed. The Cow-herd's wife once more becamethe Spinning Girl and hied her to her heavenly abode.

It so happened that her husband had a piece of cow-skin whichgave him power over earth and air. Snatching up this, with hisox-goad, he followed in the footsteps of his fleeing wife.

Arriving at their heavenly home the happy couple soughtthe joys of married life. The Spinning Girl gave up her loom,and the Cow-herd his cattle, until their negligence annoyedthe King of Heaven, and he repented having let her leaveher loom. He called upon the Western Royal Mother foradvice. After consultation they decided that the two shouldbe separated. The Queen, with a single stroke of her greatsilver hairpin, drew a line across the heavens, and fromthat time the Heavenly River has flowed between them, andthey are destined to dwell forever on the two sides of the

Milky Way.

What had seemed to the youthful pair the promise ofperpetual joy, became a condition of unending grief. Theywere on the two sides of a bridgeless river, in plain sight ofeach other, but forever debarred from hearing the voice orpressing the land of the one beloved, doomed to perpetualtoil unlit by any ray of joy or hope.

Their evident affection and unhappy condition moved theheart of His Majesty, and caused him to allow them to visiteach other once with each revolving year,--on the seventhday of the seventh moon. But permission was not enough,for as they looked upon the foaming waters of the turbulentstream, they could but weep for their wretched condition,for no bridge united its two banks, nor was it allowed thatany structure be built which would mar the contour of theshining dome.

In their helplessness the magpies came to their rescue. Atearly morn on the seventh day of the seventh moon, thesebeautiful birds gathered in great flocks about the home ofthe maiden, and hovering wing to wing above the river,made a bridge across which her dainty feet might carry herin safety. But when the time for separation came, the twowept bitterly, and their tears falling in copious showers arethe cause of the heavy rains which fall at that season of theyear.

From time immemorial it has been known that the YellowRiver is neither more nor less than a prolongation of theMilky Way, soiled by earthly contact and contamination, andthat the homes of the Spinning Maiden and the Cow-herdare the centres of two of the numerous villages that adorn itsbanks. It is not to be wondered at, however, that in an evil andskeptical world there should be many who doubt these facts.

On this account, and to forever settle the dispute, thegreat traveller and explorer, Chang Ch'ien, undertook todiscover the source of the Yellow River. He first transformedthe trunk of a great tree into a boat, provided himself with thenecessities of life and started on his journey.

Days passed into weeks, and weeks became months as he sailed upthe murky waters of the turbid stream. But the farther he went

the clearer the waters became until it seemed as if they wereflowing over a bed of pure, white limestone. Village aftervillage was passed both on his right hand and on his left, andmany were the strange sights that met his gaze. The fields becamemore verdant, the flowers more beautiful, the scenery moregorgeous, and the people more like nymphs and fairies. The colorof the clouds and the atmosphere was of a richer, softer hue;while the breezes which wafted his frail bark were milder andgentler than any he had known before.

Despairing at last of reaching the source he stopped at avillage where he saw a maiden spinning and a young manleading an ox to drink. He alighted from his boat and inquired ofthe girl the name of the place, but she, without making reply,tossed him her shuttle, telling him to return to his home andinquire of the astrologer, who would inform him where he receivedit, if he but told him when.

He returned and presented the shuttle to the notedastrologer Chun Ping, informing him at the same time where,when and from whom he had received it. The latter consultedhis observations and calculations and discovered thaton the day and hour when the shuttle had been given tothe traveller he had observed a wandering star enter andleave the villages of the Spinning Girl and the Cow-herd,which proved beyond doubt that the Yellow River is theprolongation of the Milky Way, while the points of lightwhich we call stars, are the inhabitants of Heaven pursuingcallings similar to our own.

Chang Ch'ien made another important discovery, namely,that the celestials, understanding the seasons better thanwe, turn the shining dome in such a way as to make theHeavenly River indicate the seasons of the year, and so thechildren sing:

Whene'er the Milky Way you spy, Diagonal across the sky, The egg-plant you may safely eat, And all your friends to melons treat.

But when divided towards the west, You'll need your trousers and your vest When like a horn you see it float; You'll need your trousers and your coat.

It is unnecessary to state that I did not go to sleep whilethe old nurse was telling the story of the Heavenly River.The child sat on his little stool, his elbows on his kneesand his chin resting in his hands, listening with open lipsand eyes sparkling with interest. To the old nurse it wasreal. The spinning girl and the cow-herd were livingpersons. The flowers bloomed,--we could almost smell theirodor,--and the gentle breezes seemed to fan our cheeks.She had told the story so often that she believed it, and sheimparted to us her own interest.

"Nurse," said the child, "tell me about

" 'THE MAN IN THE MOON.' "

"The man in the moon," said the old nurse, "is calledWu Kang. He was skilled in all the arts of the genii, andwas accustomed to play before them whenever opportunityoffered or occasion required.

"Once it turned out that his performances were displeasingto the spirits, and for this offense he was banishedto the moon, and condemned to perpetual toil in hewingdown the cinnamon trees which grow there in great abundance.At every blow of the axe he made an incision, butonly to see it close up when the axe was withdrawn.

"He had another duty, however, a duty which was attimes irksome, but one which on the whole was morepleasant than any that falls to men or spirits,--the dutyindicated by the proverb that 'matches are made in themoon.'

"It was his lot to bind together the feet of all those onearth who are destined to a betrothal, and in the performanceof this duty, he was often compelled to return toearth. When doing so he came as an old man with longwhite hair and beard, with a book in his hand in which hehad written the matrimonial alliances of all mankind. Healso carried a wallet which contains a ball of invisible cordwith which he ties together the feet of all those who aredestined to be man and wife, and the destinies which heannounces it is impossible to avoid.

"On one occasion he came to the town of Sung, andwhile sitting in the moonlight, turning over the leaves ofhis book of destinies, he was asked by Wei Ku, whohappened to be passing, who was destined to become hisbride. The old man consulted his records, as he answered:'Your wife is the daughter of an old woman named Ch'enwho sells vegetables in yonder shop.'

"Having heard this, Wei Ku went the next day to lookabout him and if possible to get a glimpse of the one towhom the old man referred, but he discovered that theonly child the old woman had was an ill-favored one oftwo years which she carried in her arms. He hired anassassin to murder the infant, but the blow was badlyaimed and left only a scar on the child's eyebrow.

"Fourteen years afterwards, Wei Ku married a beautifulmaiden of sixteen whose only defect was a scar above theeye, and on inquiries he discovered that she was the oneforetold by the Old Man of the Moon, and he recalled theproverb that 'Matches are made in heaven, and the bond offate is sealed in the moon.' "

"Nurse, tell me about the land of the big people,"whereupon the nurse told him of

THE LAND OF GIANTS.

"There was in ancient times a country east of Korea whichwas called the land of the giants. It was celebrated for itslength rather than for its width, being bounded on all sidesby great mountain ranges, the like of which cannot be foundin other countries. It extends for thousands of miles alongthe deep passes between the mountains, at the entrance towhich there are great iron gates, easily closed, but verydifficult to open.

"Many armies have made war upon the giants, amongwhich none have been more celebrated than those of Korea,which embraces in its standing army alone many thousandsof men, but thus far they have never been conquered.

"Nor is this to be wondered at, for besides their great irongates, and numerous fortifications, the men are thirty feettall according to our measurement, have teeth like a saw,

hooked claws, and bodies covered with long black hair.

"They live upon the flesh of fowls and wild beasts whichare found in abundance in the mountain fastnesses, but theydo not cook their food. They are very fond of humanflesh, but they confine themselves to the flesh of enemiesslain in battle, and do not eat the flesh of their own people,even though they be hostile, as this is contrary to the lawof the land.

"Their women are as large and fierce as the men, but theirduties are confined to the preparation of extra clothing forwinter wear, for although they are covered with hair it isinsufficient to protect them from the winter's cold."

While the old nurse was relating the tale of the giants Icould not but wonder whether there was not some relationbetween that and the Brobdingnagians I had read about inmy youth. But I was not given much time to think. Thisseemed to have been a story day, for the nurse had hardlyfinished the tale till the child said:

"Now tell me about the country of the little people," and sherelated the story of

THE LAND OF DWARFS.

"The country of the little people is in the west, wherethe sun goes down.

"Once upon a time a company of Persian merchants weremaking a journey, when by a strange mishap they lost theirway and came to the land of the little people. They wereat first surprised, and then delighted, for they discoveredthat the country was not only densely populated with theselittle people, who were not more than three feet high, butthat it was rich in all kinds of precious stones and rare andvaluable materials.

"They discovered also that during the season of plantingand harvesting, they were in constant terror lest the greatmultitude of cranes, which are without number in thatregion, should swoop down upon them and eat both themand their crops. They soon learned, however, that the littlepeople were under the protecting care of the Roman Empire,

whose interest in them was great, and her arm mighty, andthey were thus guarded from all evil influences as well asfrom all danger. Nor was this a wholly unselfish intereston the part of the Roman power, for the little peoplerepaid her with rich presents of the most costly gems,--pearls, diamonds, rubies and other precious stones."

I need not say I was beginning to be surprised at thenumber of tales the old woman told which correspondedto those I had been accustomed to read and hear in mychildhood, nor was my surprise lessened when at his requestshe told him how

THE SUN WENT BACKWARD.

"Once upon a time Lu Yang-kung was engaged in battle with HanKou-nan, and they continued fighting until nearly sundown. Theformer was getting the better of the battle, but feared he wouldlose it unless they fought to a finish before the close of day.The sun was near the horizon, and the battle was not yet ended,and the former, pointing his lance at the King of Day caused himto move backward ten miles in his course."

"When did that happen?" inquired the child.

"The Chinese say it happened about three thousand years ago,"replied the old nurse.

"Now tell me about the man who went to the fire star."

The old woman hesitated a moment as though she was trying torecall something and then told him the story of

MARS, THE GOD OF WAR.

"Once upon a time there was a great rebel whose namewas Ch'ih Yu. He was the first great rebel that ever livedin China. He did not want to obey the chief ruler, andinvented for himself warlike weapons, thinking that in thisway he might overthrow the government and place himselfupon the throne.

"He had eighty-one brothers, of whom he was the leader. They hadhuman speech, but bodies of beasts, foreheads of iron, and fedupon the dust of the earth.

"When the time for the battle came, he called upon theChief of the Wind and the Master of the Rain to assist him,and there arose a great tempest. But the Chief sent theDaughter of Heaven to quell the storm, and then seized andslew the rebel. His spirit ascended to the Fire-Star (Mars)--the embodiment of which he was while upon earth,--where it resides and influences the conduct of warfare evento the present time."

"Tell me the story of the man who went to the mountainto gather fire-wood and did not come home for such along time."

The old nurse began a story which as it progressedreminded me of

RIP VAN WINKLE.

"A long time ago there lived a man named Wang Chih,which in our language means 'the stuff of which kingsare made.' In spite of his name, however, he was only acommon husbandman, spending his summers in plowing,planting and harvesting, and his winters in gatheringfertilizers upon the highways, and fire-wood in the mountains.

"On one occasion he wandered into the mountains ofCh'u Chou, his axe upon his shoulder, hoping to find moreand better fire-wood than could be found upon his ownscanty acres, or the adjoining plain. While in themountains he came upon a number of aged men, in a beautifulmountain grotto, intently engaged in a game of chess.Wang was a good chess-player himself, and for the timeforgot his errand. He laid down his axe, stood silentlywatching them, and in a very few moments was deeplyinterested in the game.

"It was while he was thus watching them that one ofthe old men, without looking up from the game, gave himwhat seemed to be a date seed, telling him at the same timeto put it in his mouth. He did so, but no sooner had hetasted it, than he lost all consciousness of hunger and thirst,and continued to stand watching the players and the progressof the game, thinking nothing of the flight of time.

"At last one of the old men said to him:

" 'You have been here a long time, ought you not to go home?'

"This aroused him from his reverie, and he seemed toawake as from a dream, his interest in the game passedaway, and he attempted to pick up his axe, but found thatit was covered with rust and the handle had moulded away.But while this called his attention to the fact that time hadpassed, he felt not the burden of years.

"When he returned to the plain, and to what had formerly been hishome, he discovered that not only years but centuries had passedaway since he had left for the mountains, and that his relativesand friends had all crossed to the 'Yellow Springs,' while allrecords of his departure had long since been forgotten, and healone remained a relic of the past.

"He wandered up and down inquiring of the oldest people of allthe villages, but could discover no link which bound him to thepresent.

"He returned to the mountain grotto, devoted himself tothe study of the occult principles of the 'Old Philosopher'until the material elements of his mortal frame were graduallyevaporated or sublimated, and without having passedthrough the change which men call death, he became animmortal spirit returning whence he came."

Just as the old woman finished this story, my teacher,who always took a nap after lunch, ascended the steps.

"Ah, the story of Wang Chih."

"Do you know any of these stories?" I asked him as I sat downbeside him.

"All children learn these stories in their youth," heanswered, and then as if fearing I would try to induce him totell them to me he continued, "but nurses always tell thesestories better than any one else, because they tell them sooften to the children, for whom alone they were made."